
aass_I 



V' 



Book. 



\ /• 



Vi 



» rc 



THE NEW SOUTH. 



I 




HENRY W. GRADY 

[From a Photograph by C. W. IMotes.] 



THE 

NEW SOUTH 



HENRY W.- GRADY, 



WITH A CHARACTER SKETCH OF HENRY W. 
GRADY 

By OLIVER DYER, 
Author op " Great Senators." 



NEW YORK: 

ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 

1890. 



^' 



Ayvw\3. 



Copyright, 1890, 
By ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 

(AU rights reserved.) 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW YORK LEDGER 

NCW YORK. 






Contents. 



Character Sketch of Henry W. Grady . pages 9-140 



CHAPTER L ^ 

The people of the South— Recuperative poaver 

AND PATIENCE IN ADVERSITY GrOWTH IN ' 

"WEALTH AND RESOURCES ThE GREAT PROBLEM 

PRESENTED BY THE TWO RACES ThE OBLIGA- 
TIONS CF CIVILIZATION — ThE NEW SoUTH IS 
SIMPLY THE OLD SoUTH UNDER NEW CONDITIONS 

The SLAVE-OWNING ERA IN THE SoUTH — 

The MIRACLE OF THE SLAVE IN LOYALTY TO 
HIS MASTER— The RELATIONS OF THE RACES IN 

SLAVERY— The code duello — The ante-bel- 
lum SOCIETY — The promise of her great 
destiny pages 141-163 

CHAPTER II. 

Atlanta after the War— The city rises from 
its ashes— Strenuous exertions of a ruined 
people — The volume of depreciated cur- 
rency—The ERA of speculation — INDE- 
SCRIBABLE ACTIVITY — Feverish tumult in 



iv Contents. 



PAGE 
ALL TRADING CENTERS — UNIVERSAL DEMAND 

FOR LAND — Cotton once more king — Reac- 
tions FROM reckless LAND AND COTTON SPEC- 
ULATION — The burden of usury — The crea- 
tors OF the new South — The South rebuilt 
BY Southern brains and energy — The 
South American and religions — Immigrants 
welcomed pages 164-187 

CHAPTER III. 
The lesson of a burial —Development of the 
Georgia marble quarries — Iron becomes 
KING — Industrial growth of the South — 
Iron furnaces in the Birmingham district 
— Progress represented by figures — Mar- 
velous growth of a Southern city — Roll- 
ing mills follow iron furnaces — Atlanta 
sends plows to Mexico— The cotton-seed 
oil industry — Fertilizers and soap fac- 
tories pages 188-207 

CHAPTER IV. 

What cotton does for the South — The great 
commercial chess-board — The cotton- 
planter INDEPENDENT OF COMPETITION — ThE 
PEACH GROWERS OF THE SoUTH — CANNING 
AND PRESERVING FACTORIES — SOUTHERN AGRI- 
CULTURE BROADENING— The Farmers' Alli- 



Conteiits. 



PAGE 

AXCE — The hen-coop and the dairy — The 

GRAIN AND GRASS CROPS ThE GRAZING RE- 
SOURCES OF Southern farms— Good schools 
AND churches— Growing cities and good 
markets — Railroad system of the South . . 

pages 208-230 

CHAPTER V. _ 

The race problem — Conditions of harmony 
between tayo races— Southern beliefs re- 
garding RACE troubles —Intimidation of 
the colored yote in the South — Proportion 
of taxes paid by negroes — The Methodist 
Episcopal church and the negroes — Solu- 
tion of the race problem — Interference 
irritates and outside opinion misjudges. .. 

pages 231-252 

CHAPTER VI. 

The old men of the South — The fathers and 
the sons — Thrift succeeding the careless 

LIBERALITY OF THE OLDEN TIME — ThE SEA 

islands attracting northern -millionaires 
— The wealth of pine timber of the South 
— The cotton field — The Southern Com- 
stock lode — industrial forces at work — 
Southern good feeling, loyalty and sin- 
cerity PAGES 253-273 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 

OF 

Henry Woodfin Grady. 



By OLIVER DYER. 

Author op "Great Senators." 

Henry Woodfin Grady was born in 
Athens, Ga., May 17, 185 1. He was the 
eldest of three children. His father was 
a prosperous merchant in x\thens before 
the war, and his mother (whose maiden 
name was Gartrell) was an intelligent 
lady, of deep religious convictions, in 
whom sweetness of disposition and force 
of character were happily blended. Mr. 
Grady's biographers tell us that he was a 



lo The New South. 

boy of unusual promise from his earliest 
3'ears, and it is recorded that his youth 
and early manhood amply fulfilled all the 
promises of his boyhood. His father lost 
his life in the Confederate service when 
Henry was in his fourteenth year. This 
tragic event profoundly affected the gen- 
erous and high-spirited boy, who revered 
his father and loved him with passionate 
devotion. The maintenance and guid- 
ance of the family, including Henry and 
his younger brother and sister, William 
and Martha, devolving upon the widowed 
mother, she developed all the mental and 
spiritual resources necessary for the suc- 
cessful discharge of her onerous duties. 
Henry continued his studies, and was 
graduated from the University of 



The Nczu Soitth. 1 1 

Georgia in 1868, at the age of seventeen. 
He then entered the University of Vir- 
ginia, and took his degree in that institu- 
tion before he was twenty years old. He 
was married soon afterwards, and then 
began his struggle for bread and fame. 
Choosing journalism as his vocation, he 
made his first venture, as editor of the 
Rome (Ga.) Commercial. Failing in this 
he next embarked his fortunes in the 
Atlanta Herald which had a brilliant but 
short-lived career. He then started the 
Atlanta Capital, 2l weekly paper which 
soon went the way of its unfortunate pre- 
decessors. These repeated failures in- 
volved Mr. Grady in such financial em- 
barrassments that, as one of his biograph- 
ers touchingly says, '' He stood in At- 



12 TJie Ahw South. 

lanta bankrupt and almost broken- 
hearted. Everything behind him was 
blotted with failure, and nothing ahead 
of him was lighted with promise." 

But he rose superior to his misfortunes 
and began to make reputation and friends. 
One of the latter (Cyrus W. Field) loaned 
him twenty thousand dollars with which 
to buy a quarter interest in the Atlanta 
Constitution, and he became permanently 
associated in the management of that 
prosperous newspaper. From that time 
he showed a genius for journalism, and 
his success Avas sufiBcient to gratify the 
highest professional ambition. As he 
grew in years and ripened in experience, 
his sympathies widely and rapidly ex- 
panded until they touched almost every 



The Nczu South. 13 

public interest that could stimulate ele- 
vated intelligence and appeal to enlight- 
ened patriotism. 

He became intensely interested in the 
development of the South and in the 
eradication of the lingering sentiments of 
hostility between the South and the 
North, in order that the two sections 
might harmoniously coalesce and become 
blended in a perfectly unified nation. His 
magnificent efforts in this noble and pa- 
triotic mission brought him conspicuously 
before his countrymen ; and Avhen his 
brilliant and beneficent career was cut 
short by his sudden death at Atlanta, on 
December 23, 1889, the heart of the 
nation was pierced with sorrow. The 
whole country had become interested in 



14 The Nezu South. 

the work in which he was so devotedly 
engaged. One of the crowning portions 
of that work was done in the New York 
Ledger, It consisted of a series of 
articles, under the title of The New 
South, on the subjects nearest Mr. 
Grady's heart. These articles were 
among the latest productions that came 
from his affluent pen, the last of the series 
being published in the Ledger only two 
days before Mr. Grady died. Those re- 
markable productions excited such deep 
and general interest when they were 
issued in the Ledger that there has been 
constant pressure for their publication in 
book form. This desire has been 
acceded to ; the articles are to be issued 
in 9, volume bearing the title — The New 



The New South, 15 

South — selected by Mr. Grady himself ; 
and it having devolved upon the writer 
hereof to furnish an introduction to The 
New South, he diffidently submits the 
following sketch and estimate of Mr. 
Grady's character and work. 



1 6 The New South, 



Mr. Grady's Character and Work. 

A great many babies — boy babies — 
were born in Georgia in the year 1851, 
and myriads of others were born during 
the same year throughout the United 
States. These myriads of boy babies 
have gone their myriad ways ; tens of 
thousands of them, let us hope, reached 
man's estate, and doubtless many thous- 
ands of them are still extant on this 
globe ; and of all those myriads how 
many of them made the figure in the 
world that Henry Woodlin Grady made ? 
how many of them achieved the distinc- 
tion, or gained the admiration, or won the 



The New South. 17 

afifection, or wielded the influence which 
he achieved and gained and won and 
wielded ? This question brings us face 
to face with the fact that Mr. Grady 
was an extraordinary man ; a man who, 
among tens of thousands, stands out 
perspicuous, distinguished, picturesque, 
whose like is not discoverable among the 
myriads who were born in the United 
States during his natal year, or have come 
into being since that year. 

In order to understand the character 
and career of such a man, we must per- 
ceive with clear vision what the central 
attribute of his nature was; what the 
inmost heart of him was ; what his fore- 
most purpose was; what was the propel- 
ling power within him that could so push 



1 8 The New SoiUh. 

him on to the front over all obstacles and 
through all hinderances ; what exalted 
motive governed him, sustained him, and 
in defeat and failure inspired him with 
unconquerable determination to begin 
anew and compel fortune to crown him 
with victory. Happily, it is not difficult 
to perceive what the central attribute of 
Mr. Grady's nature was, or what was the 
pivotal purpose of his life. They shine 
out with such radiance all through his 
career that they may be seen and known 
of all men. The central attribute of 
Mr. Grady's nature was unselfishness, 
disinterestedness, love — ■ all-embracing 
love ; the pivotal purpose of his life was 
to serve his country — every part of his 
country (his patriotism being as bound- 



The New Sottth. 19 



less as his love) — with absolute, uncalcu- 
lating devotion. 

In considering the love which was the 
central attribute of Mr. Grady's nature, 
the reader should not imagine it to be 
that vague, unembodied sentiment which 
usually passes for love, and is exhausted 
in that diffusive yearning over mankind 
which never focalizes itself sufficiently to 
bring comfort or render practical aid to 
any needy member of the human race. 
Mr. Grady's love was an organic force, 
with eyes to see and brain to plan and 
hands to execute. While, like the sun, 
it shed its cheering beams on every side, 
it was so individualized and focalized 
that it specially touched and inspired 
everybody within its range, shining alike 



20 The New South. 

on the evil and on the good, and distil- 
ling its beneficent dews upon the just and 
the unjust. 

Mr. Grady's patriotism partook of the 
quality of his love ; although romantic 
and general, it was also practical and 
local. It was not that kind of patriotism 
which expends itself in eulogizing the 
American eagle. It took hold of the 
practical condition and interests of the 
country — of its diversified industries, its 
agriculture, its manufactures, its com- 
merce, its internal development, its exter- 
nal relations, its education and its relig- 
ion. In these respects Mr. Grady more 
nearly resembled Henry Clay than any 
one with whose character and life I am 
acquainted. Henry Grady, like Henry 



The New South. 21 

Clay, loved his country with intense 
devotion. He loved all parts of his 
country, and everybody in it, and took a 
deep and personal interest in the voca- 
tions of his countrymen, and in every- 
thing which in the least contributed to 
the national welfare or the national 
glory. 

And yet this man was a Southerner, a 
native of Georgia, whose father fell fight- 
ing under the flag of the Confederacy, and 
who never for an instant ceased to honor 
his father's conduct or to sympathize with 
his father's comrades. For, while patri- 
otically accepting the result of the civil 
war and reverently recognizing the hand 
of an overruling Providence in the pre- 
servation of the American Union, Mr. 



22 The New South, 

Grady never would admit that his father 
and his father's friends did wrong in 
fighting for what they believed to be a 
sacred cause. But while thus standing 
loyally by his father's memory, he hadn't 
the least bitterness of spirit against those 
who were for a time his father's foes. He 
recognized the civil war as a terrible 
episode in his country's history, and the 
vicissitudes and the lessons of the episode 
only made his country all the more dear 
to him. He was so widely and so thor- 
oughly informed as to American history, 
and took such pride in the country's past 
career, in its present status and its future 
promise, that, while holding in lasting 
respect the banner under which his father 
died, his intelligent and geninne patriot- 



The New South, 23 



ism led him to give the supreme devotion 
of his heart to the flag under which 
Washington and Marion and Sumter 
fought ; the flag which floated over Lee 
in Mexico ; the flag for which Jefferson 
Davis fought so gallantly and was so 
terribly wounded at Buena Vista; the 
flag on which victory perched at Appom- 
attox, the Star-Spangled Banner which has 
streamed upon the wind of every sea as 
the ensign of freedom, and circled the 
earth with its glory. 

Let Mr. Grady himself be heard on 
this subject, in the eloquent words which 
were greeted with vehement applause at 
the New England dinner in 1886: 

" The South has nothing for which to 
apologize. She believes that the late 



24 The Nezv South. 



struggle between the States was war and 
not rebellion, revolution and not conspir- 
acy, and that her convictions were as 
honest as yours. I should be unjust to 
the dauntless spirit of the South and to 
my own convictions if I did not make 
this plain in this presence. The South 
has nothing to take back. In my native 
town of Athens is a monument that 
crowns its central hills — a plain, white 
shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is 
a name dear to me above the names of 
men, that of a brave and simple man 
[Mr. Grady's father] who died in brave 
and simple faith. Not for all the glories 
of New England — from Plymouth Rock 
all the way — would I exchange the heri- 
tage he left me in his soldier's death. 



The New South. 25 

To the foot of that shaft I shall send my 
children's children to reverence him who 
ennobled their name with his heroic 
blood. But, sir, speaking from the sha- 
dow of that memory, which I honor as 
I do nothing else on earth, I say that the 
cause in which he suffered and for which 
he gave his life, was adjudged by higher 
and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and 
I am glad that the omniscient God held 
the balance of battle in His Almighty 
Hand, and that human slavery was swept 
forever from American soil — the Ameri- 
can Union saved from the wreck of war." 
No wonder that the sons of New 
England to whom this manly and touch- 
ing eloquence was addressed cheered it 
to the echo ; no wonder that such a man 



26 ^ The New South. 

as he who uttered it should have gained 
a commanding influence in every part of 
the country. It was Mr. Grady's singu- 
larly good fortune that everything con- 
nected with him, and especially his birth- 
place, conspired to render him popular 
and to augment his influence. If he had 
been born in the North, with precisely 
the same character, genius and purpose, 
it is not probable that he could have 
gained any power in the South, or that 
he could have exerted a pacificating 
influence in either section of the Union. 
But having been born, reared and edu- 
cated in the South, and being imbued 
with its noblest spirit and possessing its 
affectionate confidence, he could say any- 
where in the Southern States, and say 



The New South. 27 

without offense, what would not have 
been tolerated in a Northern man. And 
when he came North, and spoke in his 
frank, genial, eloquent way about the 
condition of affairs in the South and the 
aspirations of its inhabitants, his utter- 
ances were received not only as authori- 
tative so far as the South was concerned, 
but as in many respects satisfactory to 
the North, which responded to his fer- 
vent but dignified tender of the olive 
branch with noble spontaneity ; and so 
his eloquence became the medium 
whereby sectional discords were hap- 
pily resolved and the sentiments of 
a previously distrustful, divided and 
antagonistic people were set flowing in 
currents of conciliation. 



28 The New South. 

One secret of Mr. Grady's success 
with Northern audiences was the direct- 
ness, the frankness, the pathos, the almost 
boyish simplicity with which he pre- 
sented his case. Here is a passage from 
his speech in Boston (whence he went 
home to die) which will serve as an 
example of his manner and method in 
this respect. He had come to the dis- 
cussion of the " Race Problem " — the 
question as to what shall be the future 
status of the negroes in the South, and 
this is the way he introduced it to the 
critical Bostonians, who he had just 
reason to believe were hostile to his 
views and his sentiments : 

" Never, sir, has such a task been given 
to mortal stewardship. Never before in 



The New Soiit/i. 29 



this republic has the white race divided 
on the rights of an alien race. The red 
man was cut down as a weed, because he 
hindered the way of the American 
citizen. The yellow man was shut out 
of this republic, because he is an alien 
and inferior. The red man was the 
owner of the land— the yellow man 
highly civilized and assimilable — but 
they hindered both sections and are 
gone ! But the black man, affecting but 
one section, is clothed with every privi- 
lege of government and pinned to the 
soil, and my people commanded to make 
good at any hazard, and at any cost, his 
full and equal heirship of American privi- 
lege and prosperity. It matters not that 
every other race has been routed or 



30 The New South. 



excluded, without rhyme or reason. It 
matters not that wherever the whites and 
blacks have touched, in any era or in any 
clime, there has been irreconcilable vio- 
lence. It matters not that no two races, 
however similar, have lived anywhere, at 
any time, on the same soil, with equal 
right, in peace ! In spite of these things 
we are commanded to make good this 
change of American policy which has 
not, perhaps, changed American preju- 
dice — to make certain here what has else- 
where been impossible between whites 
and blacks — and to reverse, under the 
very worst conditions, the universal ver- 
dict of racial history. 

" And driven, sir, to this superhuman 
task with an impatience that brooks no 



The Nczv South, 31 

delay — a rigor that accepts no excuse — 
and a suspicion that discourages frank- 
ness and sincerity, we do not shrink from 
this trial. It is so interwoven with our 
industrial fabric that we cannot disen- 
tangle it if we would — so bound up in our 
honorable obligation to the world that 
we would not if we could. Can we solve 
it? The God who gave it into our 
hands, He alone can know. But this the 
weakest and the wisest of us do know ; 
we cannot solve it with less than your 
tolerant and patient sympathy — with less 
than the knowledge that the blood that 
runs in your veins is our blood — and that 
when we have done our best, whether 
the issue be lost or won, we shall feel 



32 The New South. 

your strong arms about us and hear the 
beating of your approving hearts. 

" The resolute, clear-headed, broad- 
minded men of the South, the men 
whose genius made glorious every page 
of the first seventy years of American 
history, whose courage and fortitude you 
tested in five years of the fiercest war, 
whose energy has made bricks without 
straw and spread splendor amid the ashes 
of their war-wasted homes ; these men 
wear this problem in their hearts and 
their brains, by day and by night. They 
realize, as you cannot, what this problem 
means ; what they owe to this kindly and 
dependent race ; the measure of their 
debts to the world in whose despite they 
defended and maintained slavery. And 



The New South. 33 

though their feet are hindered in its 
undergrowth, and their march encum- 
bered with its burdens, they have lost 
neither the patience from which comes 
clearness, nor the faith from which comes 
courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate 
moments is disclosed to them that vague 
and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses 
and its crimson stains, into Avhich I pray 
God they may never go, are they struck 
with more of apprehension than is 
needed to complete their consecration ! 

" Such is the temper of my people. 
But what of the problem itself ? Mr. 
President, we need not go one step 
further unless you concede right here 
that the people I speak for are as honest, 
as sensible and as just as your people, 



34 TJi^ New South. 

seeking as earnestly as you would in 
their place, to rightly solve the problem 
that touches them at every vital point. 
If you insist that they are ruffians, blindly 
striving with bludgeon and shotgun to 
plunder and oppress a race, then I shall 
sacrifice my self-respect and tax your 
patience in vain. But admit that they are 
men of common sense and common hon- 
esty, wisely modifying an environment 
they cannot wholly disregard, guiding 
and controlling as best they can the 
vicious and irresponsible of either race, 
compensating error with frankness, and 
retrieving in patience what they lose in 
passion, and conscious all the time that 
wrong means ruin, admit this, and we 



The New South. 35 

may reach an understanding to-night." 
[Great applause, and cheers.] 

It was characteristic of the Bostonians 
that they responded to such a touching, 
straightforward, manly appeal as that, 
with applause and cheers. Whatever 
may have been their mental reservations, 
there was no reservation of their hearts. 
In truth, such eloquence is irresistible 
when addressed to a high-toned and 
intelligent audience. 

Any one who has read the foregoing 
extracts from Mr. Grady's speeches must 
have observed, or at least have felt, that 
a pleasing unexpectedness is one of the 
charms of his style. Nor is the unexpec- 
tedness a mere play of words, an effort to 
startle or to amuse ; it is often the utter- 



36 The New South. 

ance of a great but thitherto unobserved 
truth which is thrown out by an emotion 
born in the depths of the speaker's soul. 
Mr. Grady's reference to Abraham Lin- 
coln in his New England Dinner speech 
was a flash of that kind. He had referred 
to the Puritan colonists of New England 
and to the Cavalier colonists of the 
South, and argued that the union of the 
two strains of blood had produced a bet- 
ter type than either of them. A previous 
speaker having remarked that ^' the typi- 
cal American was yet to come," Mr. 
Grady, in response to that statement, 
said : 

'' Let me tell you that he has already 
come. Great types, like valuable plants, 
are slow to flower and fruit. But from 



The Neiu South. 37 

the union of these colonist Puritans and 
Cavaliers, from the straightening- of their 
purposes and the crossing of their blood, 
slow perfecting through a century, came 
he who stands as the first typical Ameri- 
can, the first who comprehended within 
himself all the strength and gentleness, 
all the majesty and grace of this republic 
— Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of 
Puritan and Cavalier ; for in his ardent 
nature were fused the virtues of both, and 
in the depths of his great soul the faults 
of both were lost. He was greater than 
Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he 
was American, and that in his homely 
form Avere first gathered the vast and 
thrilling forces of his ideal government, 
charging it with such tremendous mean- 



38 The JVew South. 

ing, and so elevating it above human suf- 
fering, that martry dom, though infamously 
aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life 
consecrated from the cradle to human lib- 
erty. Let us, each cherishing the tradi- 
tions and honoring his fathers, build with 
reverent hands to the type of his simple 
but sublime life, in which all types are hon- 
ored ; and in our common glory as Ameri- 
cans there will be plenty and some to 
spare for your forefathers and for mine." 
While this eloquent outburst took the 
North by surprise, it fairly stunned the 
South. In some quarters, a murmur of 
Southern dissatisfaction was at first 
heard, but it was immediately hushed, 
and the South, on recovering from its 
surprise, applauded its favorite orator's 



The New South. 39 

unexpected tribute to Abraham Lincoln 
as zealously as did the North. Indeed, 
so deep was the impression which the 
gifted young Southerner's appreciation 
of Lincoln made upon the South, that, 
at the great memorial meeting held in 
honor of Mr. Grady, at Atlanta, Ga., on 
December 26, 1890 (three days after his 
death), one of the orators (Walter B. 
Hill, of Macon, Ga.) used the following 
language : 

"What was he to the nation? Com- 
pelled by the limitations of the hour to 
answer in one word, I choose this : He it 
ivas ivJw first taught the rising generation of 
the SoutJi to bind the name of Lincoln zuith 
that of Washington ' as a sign upon their 
hand and a frontlet on their brow.' " 



40 The New South. 

Who can adequately estimate the con- 
ciliating influence upon the South of such 
a truth, proclaimed on such an occasion, 
in honor of the most admired and best 
loved Southern man of this generation ? 

Mr. Grady's entire career seems to 
have been strewn with peace-making 
incidents. I mean peace-making between 
the North and the South. No matter 
what enterprise he engaged in, or on 
what public occasion he spoke, something 
was done or said which tended to pro- 
mote good feeling between the two sec- 
tions, and which always broadened the 
scope of Mr. Grady's influence, and 
strengthened his hold upon the affection 
of the nation. We can see why this was 
so, if we recur to the fundamental truths 



The Nczu SoittJi, 41 



that the central attribute of Mr. Grady's 
nature was love, and that the pivotal 
purpose of his life was to serve his coun- 
try. The inborn and outflowing loving- 
ness of his nature kept him perpetually 
active in the prosecution of the main pur- 
pose of his life, and prevented him from 
cherishing feelings of resentment or a 
spirit of bitterness. His entire being was 
so dominated by love that it was easy for 
him to exercise the grace of forgiveness. 
He was not like the old Scotch Coven- 
anter who, being on his death-bed, was 
told by his minister that in order to 
obtain God's forgiveness he must himself 
forgive an enemy whom he had vowed 
never to forgive. The sturdy old Coven- 
anter at first refused to compromise the 



42 The Neiu South. 

affair in that way ; but after his faithful 
minister had labored with him to the 
very verge of dissolution, he faintly 
gasped : ** Well, I'll forgive him, but / 
ivish I could get one good crack at him 

first r 

That is about the kind of forgiveness 
which most people, whether they live in 
the North or dwell in the South, extend 
to their enemies. They always want to 
get a good crack at them first. Mr. 
Grady hadn't a jot of this petty vindic- 
tiveness which hungers for revenge even 
in the hour of reluctant forgiveness. In 
fact, his nature was so loving, so sunny, 
cheery, bright and breezy that the mala- 
ria of malignity could not infest it, and 
hence it is doubtful if he ever had 



The Nciu So7ith. 43 

occasion to exercise the grace of forgive- 
ness at all. 

It is said that Mr. Grady inherited 
these gracious qualities of his nature 
from his mother, for whom he ever cher- 
ished an ardent, devoted, immeasurable 
love — a love which, after it had deepened 
with the maturity and strength of his 
manhood, still retained the simplicity and 
freshness of his boyhood. In writing 
upon this topic, Mr. Wallace P. Reed, of 
the Atlanta Constitution, who knew Mr. 
Grady intimately, says : 

'' Twenty years ago the writer first 
saw Henry Grady and his mother 
together. He carried away a picture in 
his mind, and years later when he saw 
them together again it was the same. 



44 The Nezu Sotcth. 

The brilliant idol of his people never 
drifted entirely beyond the range of that 
mother-heart. 

" * It will please my mother !' 
" Many and many a time this tired and 
overworked man of affairs said this when 
some work of charity — some enterprise 
for the public good — some work for his 
beloved South was suggested. The 
thought was enough. I believe that hun- 
dreds of times, when the orator looked 
upon the smiling faces of his hearers 
amidst their hearty plaudits, he was look- 
ing beyond them to his mother's face, 
and listening in anticipation to her words 
of encouragement. 

" Stern, rugged men were softened by 
the womanly tenderness of Henr}- Grady. 



The New South. 45 

They wondered how he could be so 
hopeful, sympathetic and forgiving — so 
slow to speak words of bitterness and 
resentment — so ready to cheer and help 
the sad-hearted, the unfortunate and the 
erring. It was the mother speaking and 
working through the son !" 

Other good and brilliant men have 
loved their mothers with undying affec- 
tion, but no one has come within the 
scope of my observation who loved the 
humble, the poor, the outcast, as Henry 
Grady loved them. In the beginning of 
his career he enriched literature with a 
number of sketches and stories. A care- 
ful study of these productions reveals 
that attractive quality of Mr. Grady's 
nature to which reference has just been 



46 The New South, 



made. His heroes and heroines are 
never taken from the higher walks of 
life, but always from the ranks of the 
poor and the unfortunate. He loves to 
throw the glamour of romantic prosper- 
ity and happiness over the squalid lives 
of the miserable and the wretched. It is 
evident that in some cases his characters 
walked the streets of Atlanta a_nd took 
hold of his purse as well as of his imag- 
ination ; and that while his sympathetic 
genius glorified their ideal possibilities, 
his practical benevolence relieved their 
sordid sufferings. To him, some 
wretched creature who had been worsted 
in life's battle and had perhaps come un- 
der the dominion of strong drink, presented 
a more interesting study than any of 



The New South, 47 



earth's potentates. This truth is attrac- 
tively illustrated in one of his sketches, 
where after dilating- upon the sad fate of 
certain unfortunate creatures, he goes on 
in this charming fashion : 

" I don't know how it is, but I have a 
mania for looking into cases of this sort. 
It is not philanthropy with me ; it is a 
disease. 

" At the editorial desk, I sit opposite a 
young man of a high order of mind. 

" He makes it a point to compass the 
problems of nations. I dodge them. He 
has settled, to his own agreement, every 
European problem of the past decade. 
Those problems have settled me. He 
soars — I plod. Once in a while, when he 
yearns for a listener, he reaches down for 



48 The Xcil' South. 

my scalp, and lifts me up to his altitude, 
where I shiver and blink, until his 
talented fingers relax and I drop home. 
It delights him to adjust his powerful 
mind to the contemplation of contending 
armies, — I swash around with the swarm 
that hangs about me. 

" His hero is Bismarck, that phleg- 
matic miracle that has yoked impulse to 
an ox, and ha\'ing made a chess-board of 
Europe, plays a quiet game with the 
Pope. My hero is a blear-eyed sot, that 
having for four years waged a gigantic 
battle with drink, and alternated between 
watery Reform and positive Tremens, is 
now plaving a vague and losing game 
with Spontaneous Combustion. My 
friend discusses Bismarck's projects with 



The Xcik.^ South. 49 

a vastness of mind that actually makes 
his discourse dim, and I slip off to try my 
hero's temper, and see whether I shall 
have him wind his intoxicated arms about 
my neck and envelope me in an atmo- 
spher of whisky and reform, or fall re- 
cumbent in the gutter, his weak but 
honest face upturned to the skv, and his 
moist, white hand working vaguelv up- 
\vard from his placid breast, in token of 
abject surrender. 

** Bismarck is a bigger man than Bob. 

" But I can't help thinking that Bob is 
engaged in the most thrilling and desper- 
ate conflict. Anyhow, I had rather see 
his waterv eves grow clear and his par- 
oxvsmal arms grow steadfast, than to see 
Bismarck wipe out everv potentate in 



50 The New South. 

Europe. It's a grave thing to watch the 
conflicts of kings, and see nations embat- 
tled rushing against each other. But 
there are greater and deeper conflicts 
waged in our midst every day, when the 
legions of Despair swarm against stout 
hearts, and Hunger and Suffering storm 
the citadel of human lives." 

In sketching a motherless little girl, 
nine years old, who (with her baby sister, 
Mary) had been left to the neglect of a 
drunken father, Mr. Grady exhibits some 
of his most engaging characteristics. 
The forlorn child, whose name was Jane, 
did her poor little best to earn food and 
clothing for her baby sister and herself, 
but of course she was perpetually 
worsted in the struggle, and in her direst 



The New South. 51 



need she seldom failed to apply to Mrs. 
Grady for help, which she never failed to 
receive. 

" One day," Mr. Grady writes, " I was 
sitting- behind a window looking at Jane, 
who stood in the kitchen door. Her 
oldish-looking, chipper little face was 
turned straight to me. It was a pretty 
face. The brown eyes were softened 
with suffering, and fear and anxiety had 
driven all color from her thin cheeks. I 
Qoticed that her mouth was never still. 
Though she was alone and silent, her lips 
quivered and trembled all the time. At 
times they would break into a dumb sob. 
Then she would draw them firmly 
together. Again they would twitch con- 
vulsively in the terrible semblance of a 



52 The New South. 



smile. Then in that pretty, feminine way 
she would pucker them together. 

" Long suffering had racked the child 
until she was all awry, and her nerves 
were plunging through her tender frame 
like devils. 

" ' Jane, were you ever hungry?' 
" ' Sir !' and she started painfully, while 
her starved heart managed to send a thin 
coating of scarlet into her cheeks. She 
was a proud little body, and never talked 
of her sorrows. 

'' May the Lord forgive me for repeat- 
ing the question ! 

" ' Sometimes, sir, when I couldn't sell 
anything. Last Saturday we had only 
some bread for dinner. We never had 
anything else until Sunday night. I 



The New South. 53 

wouldn't have minded it then ; but 
Mary cried so lor bread that I went out, 
and a lady that I knew gave me some 
things.' 

" Now, think of that. From a crust at 
Saturday noon, on nothing till Sunday 
night. Of all the abundant marketing of 
Saturday evening ; of all the luxuries of 
Sunday breakfast and dinner, not a 
crumb for this poor child. While we 
were dressing our children for their trip 
to Sunday-school, or their romp over the 
hills, this poor child,, gnawed by hunger, 
deserted by her drunken father, holding 
a starving baby, sat crouched in a hovel, 
given up to despair and hopelessness. 
And that, too, within the sound of the 
bells that made the church-steeples thrill 



54 The New South. 



with music, and . called God's people to 
church ! 

*' A friend who had heard Jane's story 
had given me three dollars for her. I 
gave it to her, and told her that as her 
rent was paid, she could with this lay in 
some provisions. She was crying then, 
but she dried her tears and hurried off. 



** * Will you please come here and 
look ?' called a lady whose call I always 
obey, about an hour afterward. 

" I went, and there stood Jane, flushed 
and happy. 

'' ' 1 declare I am astonished at this 
child !' said the lady. 



The New Soicth. 55 

" And therewith she displayed Jane's 
purchases. A little meal and meat had been 
sent home. The rest she had with her. 
First, there was a goblet of strained 
honey ; then a bundle of candy ' for 
baby,* a package of tea ' for father,' and 
a chip straw hat, with three gayly 
colored ribbons, ' for herself.' And that's 
where the money had gone ! 

" ' I am just put out with her,' said the 
arbitress of my affairs, after Jane had 
gathered up her treasures and departed. 
* To waste her money like that ! I can 
imagine how the poor, half-starved child 
couldn't help buying the honey-goblet ; I 
should die myself if 1 didn't have some- 
thing sweet ; but how she came to buy 
that hat and ribbons I can't see !' 



56 The Nezu SoiUh, 

'' Ah, blue-eyed woman ! There's a 
yearning in the feminine soul stronger 
than hunger. There's a passion there 
that starvation cannot conquer. The hat 
and ribbons were bought in response to 
that craving. The hat, I'll bet thee, was 
bought before the honey, — aye, before the 
meal or meat. ' Can't understand it ?' 
Then, my spouse, I'll explain : Jane is a 
woman ! 

" I must confess that I was pleased at 
the misdirection of Jane's funds. Have 
you ever had a child deep in a long-con- 
tinued stupor from fever? How 
delighted you were then when, tempted 
by some trifle, he gave signs of eager- 
ness ! So I was rejoiced to see that the 
long years of suffering had not crushed 



The New SoiU/i. 57 

hope and emotion out of this girl's life. 
The tea and the candy showed that 
her affections, working up to the father 
and drawn to the baby, were all right. 
The honey gave evidence that the fresh 
impulses of childhood had not been 
nipped and chilled. The hat and ribbons 
— best and most hopeful purchase of all — 
proved that the womanly vanity and love 
of prettiness still fluttered in her young 
soul. Nothing is so charming and so 
feminine in woman as the passion for 
dress. Laugh at it as we may, I think 
that men will agree that there is nothing 
so pathetic as a young woman out of 
whom all hope of fine appearance has 
been pressed. A gay ribbon is the sign 
in which woman conquers. I wager that 



58 The New South. 

Eve made a neat, many-colored thing of 
fig leaves." 

An additional charm was imparted to 
Mr. Grady's benevolence and gayety of 
spirits, by his deeply reverent and reli- 
gious nature. He was a born religionist, 
who worshipped God with spontaneous 
love, and believed in Him with a faith 
which, notwithstanding his luminous 
intelligence and manifold accomplish- 
ments, was simple and childlike. He 
reverenced the old religious landmarks ; 
the Bible in which his beloved mother 
found inspiration and consolation was the 
Bible for him. There was nothing aus- 
tere or gloomy or depressing in his reli- 
gion. It was hopeful, buoyant, elastic, 
cheerful. He loved God more than he 



The New South, 59 



feared Him, and believed in Him with 
that absolute faith which nothing but 
consecrated love can inspire. Indeed, 
we might say of Mr. Grady as Carlyle 
says of Cromwell : " Here was a man, my 
lords and gentlemen, who believed in 
God, strange as that may seem to this 
generation." 

Mr. Grady not only believed in and 
loved God, but he also believed in and 
loved his neighbor, and he showed his 
love for his neighbor not by boring him 
with religious homilies and " Christian 
advice," but by helping him in adversity, 
•inspiring him with hope, and radiating 
his path with the light and glow of his 
own sunny nature. He was not a theolo- 
gian. He cared but little for metaphysi- 



6o The Nezv South. 

cal " schemes of salvation," because he 
instinctively divined that no system of 
intellectual religion, however much it 
may minister to the gratification of sec- 
tarian arrogance, can satisfy the spiritual 
hunger of the human soul. 

It was in dealing with children that 
Mr. Grady's religious nature revealed its 
most attractive qualities and seemed to 
be nearest of kin to the divine. He was 
a religious child himself, and from his 
earliest days he took delight in sacred 
things. At the age of fifteen he united 
with the Methodist church in Athens, 
Ga., — his native town. On the same occa- 
sion, Miss Julia King, who had been his 
playmate and sweetheart from childhood, 
joined the same church. Five years 



The Nezu South. 6i 

later, those two young lives, which had 
been thus conjointly consecrated to God, 
were conjoined by marriage ; and we are 
told that the current of these united lives 
flowed on in a stream of domestic felicity 
and Christian beneficence which was 
ideal in its loveliness. Mr. Grady's reli- 
gious convictions grew with his growing 
years, broadened with his expanding 
intelligence, and became more fervid in 
the glow of his deepening affections. He 
took the growth of agnosticism and the 
rising tide of atheism sorely to heart. In 
1 88 1 he wrote a remarkable article for 
the Atlanta Constitution, on '' The Atheis- 
tic Tide Sweeping Over the Continent," 
in which he said : 

^^ 1 do not know that this spirit of irrc- 



62 The New South. 

ligion and unbelief has made much 
inroad on the churches. It is as yet 
simply eating away the material upon 
which the churches must recruit and 
perpetuate themselves. There is a large 
body of men and women, the bulk prob- 
ably of our population, that is between 
the church and its enemies ; not mem- 
bers of the church or open professors of 
religion, they have yet had reverence 
for the religious beliefs, have respected 
the rule of conscience, and believed in 
the existence of one Supreme Being. 
These men and women have been useful 
to the cause of religion, in that they 
held all the outposts about the camp of 
the church militant, and protected it 
with enwrapping conservatism and sym- 



The New South. 63 



pathy. It is this class of people that are 
now yielding to the assaults of the infi- 
del. Having none of the inspiration of 
religion, and possessing neither the 
enthusiasm of converts nor the faith of 
veterans, they are easily bewildered and 
overcome. It is a careless and unthink- 
ing multitude on which the atheists are 
working, and the very inertia of a mob 
will carry thousands if the drift of the 
mass once floats to the ocean. And the 
man or woman who rides on the ebbing 
tide goes never to return. Religious 
beliefs once shattered are hardly 
mended. The church may reclaim its 
sinners, but its skeptics, never. 

*' It is not surprising that this period 
of critical investigation into all creeds 



64 The New South. 

and beliefs has come. It is a logical 
epoch, come in its appointed time. It is 
one of the penalties of progress. We 
have stripped all the earth of mystery, 
and brought all its phenomena under the 
square and compass, so that we might 
have expected science to doubt the mys- 
tery of life itself, and to plant its 
theodolite for a measurement of the 
Eternal, and pitched its crucible for an 
analysis of the sovil. It was natural that 
the Greek should be led to the worship 
of his physical gods, for the earth itself 
was a mystery that he could not divine — 
a vastness and vagueness that he could 
not comprehend. But we have fathomed 
its uttermost secret ; felt its most secret 
pulse, girdled it with steel, harnessed it 



The Nezu South. 65 



and trapped it to our liking. What was 
mystery is now demonstrated ; what was 
vague is now apparent. Science has dis- 
pelled illusion after illusion, struck down 
error after error, made plain all that was 
vague on earth, and reduced every 
mystery to demonstration. It is little 
wonder then that, at last having reduced 
all the illusions of matter to an equation, 
and anchored every theory to a fixed 
formula, it should assail the mystery of 
life itself, and warn the world that 
science would yet furnish the key to the 
problem of the soul. Fit time is this, 
then, for science to make its last and 
supreme assault— to challenge the last 
and supreme mystery— defy the last and 
supreme force. And the church may 



66 The New South. 

gird itself for the conflict ! As the Pope 
has said, ' It is no longer a rebel that 
threatens the church. It is a belliger- 
ent !' It is no longer a shading of creed. 
It is the upsettal of all creeds that is 
attempted. 

" It is impossible to conceive the mis- 
ery and the blindness that will come in 
the wake of the spreading atheism. The 
ancients witnessed the fall of a hundred 
creeds, but still had a hundred left. The 
vast mystery of life hung above them, 
but was lit with religions that were 
sprinkled as stars in its depths. From a 
host of censers was their air made rich 
with fragrance, and warmed from a field 
of altars. No loss was irreparable. But 
with us it is different. We have reached 



The New South, 67 



the end. Destroy our one belief and we 
are left hopeless, helpless, blind. Our 
air will be odorless, chill, colorless. 

" The aggressiveness of the atheists is 
inexplicable to me. Why they should 
insist on destroying a system that is pure 
and ennobling, when they have nothing 
to replace it with ; why they should 
shatter a faith that colors life, only to 
leave it colorless ; why they should rob 
life of all that makes life worth living ; 
why they should take away the consola- 
tion that lifts men and women from the 
despair of bereavement and desolation, or 
the light that guides the feet of strug- 
gling humanity, or the hope that robs 
even the grave of its terror, — why they 
should do all this, and then stand empty- 



68 The New South, 

handed and unresponsive before the 
yearning and supplicating people they 
have stripped of all that is precious, is 
more than I can understand. The best 
atheist, to my mind, that I ever knew, 
was one who sent his children to a con- 
vent for their education. ' I cannot lift 
the blight of unbelief from my own mind,* 
he said, ' but it shall never fall upon the 
minds of my children if I can help it. As 
for me, I would give all I have on earth 
for the old faith that I wore so lightly 
and threw off so carelessly.* 

*' In the conflict that is coming, the 
church is impregnable, because the 
church is right ; because it is founded 
on a rock. The scientists boast that they 
have evolved everything logically from 



The New South. 69 

the first particles of matter ; that from 
the crystal rock to sentient man is a 
steady way, marked by natural grada- 
tions. They even say that, if a new bulk 
were thrown off from the sun to-morrow 
it would spin into the face of the earth, 
and the same development that has 
crowned the earth with life would take 
place in the new world. And yet Tyndall 
says : ' We have exhausted physics, and 
reached its very rim, and yet a mighty 
mystery looms up before us.' And this 
mystery is the kindling of the atoms of 
the brain with the vital spark. There 
science is baffled, for there is the supreme 
force that is veiled eternally from the 
vision of man. 

" The church is not bound to the tech- 



JO The New South. 

nicalities of argument in this contest. It 
has the perfect right to say, and say logi- 
cally, that something must rest on faith— 
that there must be something in the heart 
or soul before conviction can be made 
perfect. Just as we cannot impress with 
the ecstacies and transports of earthly 
love a man who has never loved, or paint 
a rainbow to a man who has never seen. 
And yet the time has passed when reli- 
gion can dismiss the skeptic with a shriek 
or a sneer. I read one little book a year 
ago, gentle, firm, decisive ; a book that 
demonstrated the necessity and existence 
of the Supreme Being as clearly and as 
closely as a mathematical proposition was 
worked out. But the strength of the 
church is, after all, the high-minded con- 



The New South, 71 



sistency of its members ; the warmth and 
earnestness of its evangelism ; the purity 
and gentleness of its apostles. If the 
creeds are put at peace, and every man 
who wears the Christian armor will go 
forth to plead the cause of the meek and 
lowly Nazarene, whose love steals into 
the heart of man as the balm of flowers 
into the pulses of a summer evening — 
then we shall see the hosts of doubt and 
skepticism put to rout." 

Here, in this last paragraph, we have 
the keynote of Mr. Grady's religious 
belief and the controlling principle of his 
religious life : Do not contend about 
religious creeds, but live religious lives — 
lives which are in accordance with the 
precepts and the example of Christ, 



72 



The New South. 



" What doth it profit thee to dispute 
deeply about the Trinity if thou be want- 
ing in humility, and so be displeasing to 
the Trinity ? In truth, sublime words 
make not a saint and a just man ; but it is 
a virtuous life that maketh one dear to 
God." 

Regret has been expressed in certain 
quarters that Mr. Grady did not choose 
the pulpit, instead of the sanctum, as the 
arena in which to display his genius. 
This is a pardonable regret. It is natural 
for Mr. Grady's devout friends to wish 
that they could have heard him preach ; 
and it is easy for them to believe that, as 
a preacher, he would have been a Brooks 
and a Beecher fused into one, and that he 



The New South, 73 



mig-ht have set the heart of the world 
aflame. 

It is said that in Mr. Grady's boyhood 
the wish of his father was that he should 
become a lawyer, and it is added that at 
first the boy himself had a preference for 
the law ; but, as time went on, he was 
gradually drawn into journalism, and dis- 
covering- his aptitude for that profession, 
he conceived a passion for it. The result 
justified his course. No young- man ever 
ascended the ladder of journalistic suc- 
cess, from the bottom rung to the top, 
more rapidly than this young Georgian 
did. But, nothwithstanding his brilliant 
success as a journalist, and his great use- 
fulness in that vocation, some of his 
friends think that he made a mistake in 



74 ^-^^^ New South. 



abandoning his original intention to enter 
the profession of the law. They believe 
that as an advocate he would have won a 
reputation equal to that of any forensic 
orator of modern times. I am inclined to 
unite with his friends in this opinion. 
Mr. Grady possessed the gift for legal 
contention in the trial and argument of 
causes which Henry Ward Beecher called 
'' the hell-fired ability to think on one's 
legs." 

In his prohibition speech, delivered at 
Atlanta, on the evening of November 17, 
1887, he exhibited consummate forensic 
ability, and displayed in profusion those 
powers and qualities which convince 
courts and captivate juries. Although 
this prohibition speech, owing to its sub- 



The New South. 75 

ject matter, is not so copiously enriched 
with that eloquence which takes the 
heart captive as some of his other 
speeches are, I consider it the most log- 
ical and lawyer-like speech which Mr. 
Grady ever delivered. The ease with 
which he handles masses of statistics ; 
the clear and attractive manner in which 
he marshals his vast array of facts ; the 
witty, humorous by-play with which he 
refreshes his auditors and prevents them 
from tiring under the necessaril}^ pro- 
longed development of his case ; the 
bursts of pathetic eloquence with which 
he appeals to their sensibilities and 
arouses their indignation, and the brief, 
touching 'peroration with which he 
clinches the whole masterly performance, 



76 The New South. 

signalize " the great prohibition speech " 
as an oratorical effort of remarkable 
brilliancy and power. 

Although it is natural and pleasing to 
speculate upon the probabilities of Mr. 
Grady's success as a lawyer or a preacher, 
such speculations are of course vain. He 
was not a lawyer ; he was not a preacher : 
he was a journalist, and as a journalist he 
will be remembered and honored. Nay, 
more ; he was a public speaker of such 
obvious genius, it is not improbable 
that his fame as an orator will outlive 
his reputation as a journalist. 

The work in which this gifted, many- 
sided man took the deepest and most 
intense interest — a work which has 
already been characterized as constitut- 



TJie Nczu Soictli. yy 

ing the pivotal purpose of his life, was the 
complete reconciliation and unification of 
the North and the South, and the fusing 
of all sections of the Union into one 
homogeneous and fraternal nationality. 
In order that this great work might be 
accomplished, Mr. Grady conceived that 
two things were necessary — the settle- 
ment of the race problem and the devel- 
opment of the material resources of the 
South. He believed that these two 
movements must go on together ; that 
the acquisition of wealth and population 
by the South was necessary in order that 
she might have power to deal success- 
fwUy with the race problem ; and that the 
race problem must be settled on an en- 
during basis of wisdom and justice, in 



yS The New So7itk. 

order that the South might have peace 
within her borders and enjoy her rightful 
position in the Union and in the estima- 
tion of mankind. The phenomenal en- 
ergy and assiduity with which Mr. Grady 
addressed himself to this colossal and 
beneficent work are so well known that I 
refer to them here merely to remind the 
reader that Mr. Grady was by far the 
most potent factor in the revival of the 
prosperity of the South and the inaugura- 
tion of an era of mutual understanding 
and goodwill between the people of the 
previously estranged sections. His influ- 
ence in exciting hope and inspiring confi- 
dence in the ability of the South to cope 
successfully with her difficulties was im- 
measurable. To quote the somewhat 



The New South, 79 



undisciplined language of one of his 
admiring eulogists: ^' He did not 
tamely promote enterprise and encourage 
industry ; he vehemently fomented enter- 
prise and provoked industry until they 
stalked through the land like armed con- 
querors." 

Mr. Grady loved to descant upon the 
natural beauties, the material resources, 
the glorious possibilities of the South. 
His brief but vivid reference to the 
Southern domain, in his Boston speech, 
is a specimen of the descriptive passages 
with which he often adorned his ad- 
dresses : 

'' Far to the South, Mr. President, sep- 
arated from this section by a line— once 
defined in irrepressible difference, once 



8o The New Sotitk. 

traced in fratricidal blood, and now, 
thank God, but a vanishing shadow — lies 
the fairest and richest domain of this 
earth. It is the home of a brave and hos- 
pitable people. There is centred all that 
can please and prosper humankind. A 
perfect climate above a fertile soil yields 
to the husbandman every product of the 
temperate zone. There by night the cot- 
ton whitens beneath the stars, and by day 
the wheat locks the sunshine in its 
bearded sheaf. In the same field the 
clover steals the fragrance of the wind, 
and the tobacco catches the quick aroma 
of the rains. There are mountains stored 
with exhaustless treasures ; forests, vast 
and primeval ; and rivers that, tumbling 
or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of 



The New Sotcth. 8i 



the three essential items of all industries 
—-cotton, iron and wood— that region has 
easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly 
—in iron, proven supremacy— in timber, 
the reserve supply of the republic. 
From this assured and permanent advan- 
tage, against which artificial conditions 
cannot much longer prevail, has grown 
an amazing system of industries. Not 
maintained by human contrivance of tar- 
iff or capital, afar off from the fullest and 
cheapest source of supply, but resting in 
divine assurance, within touch of field 
and mine and forest— not set amid costly 
farms from which competition has driven 
the farmer in despair, but amid cheap 
and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to 
which neither season nor soil has set a 



82 The New South. 



limit— this system of industries is mount- 
ing to a splendor that shall dazzle and 
illumine the world. 

" That, sir, is the picture and the prom- 
ise of my home— a land better and fairer 
than I have told you, and yet but fit set- 
ting, in its material excellence, for the 
loyal and gentle quality of its citizen- 
ship." 

Mr. Grady had the art of adapting his 
speech to his audience so as to fit the 
special needs of the hour and all the cir- 
cumstances of the occasion. He was 
adroit in exciting local pride in a way 
that at the same time stimulated love of 
country, and was skillful in making selfish 
instincts and personal ambition minister 
to the development of sentiments of 



The New South. 83 



patriotism and the promotion of public 
enterprises. In his address to the 
students of the Virginia University (his 
Alma Mater) at Charlottesville, on June 
24, 1889, he exhibited his superlative tact 
in. these respects. In his exordium, 
which won the affection and confidence 
of every heart, he said : 

'' Will you allow me to say that the 
anxiety which always possesses me when 
I address my young- countrymen is 
to-day quickened to the point of con- 
secration. For the first time in man's 
responsibility I speak in Virginia to 
Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories 
that made it matchless among States, its 
later martyrdom has made it the Mecca 
of my people. It was on these hills that 



84 The New South. 

our fathers gave new and deeper mean- 
ing to heroism and advanced the world 
in honor ! It is in these valleys that our 
dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appo- 
mattox, where on every ragged gray cap 
the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of 
His imperishable knighthood. Beyond 
is Petersburg, where he, whose name I 
bear, and who was prince to me among 
men, dropped his stainless sword and 
yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, 
sir, are the people among whom my 
father died — sacred to me, sir, the soil 
that drank his precious blood. From a 
heart stirred by these emotions and 
sobered by these memories, let me speak 
to you to-day, my countrymen — and God 
give me wisdom to speak aright and the 



The New SoiUh. 85 

words wherewithal to challenge and hold 
your attention." 

It can readily be imagined how, after 
such an exordium, the young men before 
him received the instruction which the 
orator gave them in the following 
words : 

" The germ of the best patriotism is in 
the love that a man has for the home he 
inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees 
that give him shade, and the hills that 
stand in his pathway. I teach my son to 
love Georgia ; to love the soil that he 
stands on ; the body of my old mother ; 
the mountains that are her springing 
breasts, the broad acres that hold her 
substance, the dimpling valleys in which 
her beauty rests, the forests that sing her 



86 The New South, 

songs of lullaby and of praise, and the 
brooks that run with her rippling laugh- 
ter. The love of home, deep-rooted and 
abiding, that blurs the eyes of the dying 
soldier with the vision of an old home- 
stead amid green fields and clustering 
trees ; that follows the busy man through 
the clamoring world, persistent, though 
put aside, and at last draws his tired feet 
from the highway and leads him through 
shady lanes and well-remembered paths 
until, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he 
gathers up the broken threads of his life 
and owns the soil his conqueror — this 
— this lodged in the heart of the citizen, 
is the saving principle of our govern- 
ment. We note the barracks of our 
standing army with its rolling drum and 



The New South. ^'j 



its fluttering flag as points of strength 
and protection. But the citizen standing 
in the door-way of his home, contented 
on his threshold, his family gathered 
about his hearthstone, while the evening 
of a well-spent day closes in scenes and 
sounds that are dearest — he shall save 
the republic when the drum tap is futile 
and the barracks are exhausted. 

" This love should not be pent up or 
provincial. The home should be conse- 
crated to humanity, and from its roof 
tree should fly the flag of the republic. 
Every simple fruit gathered there ; every 
sacrifice endured, and every victory won, 
should bring better joy and inspiration 
in the knowledge that it will deepen the 



88 The New South. 

glory of our republic and widen the 
harvest of humanity ! 

" Exalt the citizen. As the StauC is the 
unit of government he is the unit of the 
State. Teach him that his home is his 
castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath 
his hat. Make himself self-respecting, 
self-reliant and responsible. Let him 
lean on the State for nothing that his 
own arms can do and on the government 
for nothing that his State can do. Let 
him cultivate independence to the point 
of sacrifice, and learn that humble things 
with unbartered liberty are better than 
splendors bought with its price. Let 
him neither surrender his individuality 
to government nor merge it with the 
mob. Let him stand upright and fearless 



The New South, 89 

— a freeman born of freemen, sturdy in 
his own strength, dowering his family in 
the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, 
loyal to his Republic, earnest in his allegi- 
ance wherever it rests, but building his 
altar in the midst of his household gods 
and shrining in his own heart the utter- 
most temple of its liberty." 

Among the oratorical accomplishments 
which gave Mr. Grady his power over an 
audience was that of being able to season 
the discussion of industrial topics, involv- 
ing the presentation of masses of statistics 
and the elaboration of matters which are 
usually wearysome, with eloquent ap- 
peals to their love of home and their 
social interests, and to the noblest instincts 
and aspirations of patriotism. In these 



90 The New South. 

eloquent outbursts he always kept the 
balance between love of the South and 
love of the Union skillfully poised, as in 
the peroration of his speech at Dallas, 
Texas, in October, 1888: 

" Every man within the sound of my 
voice, under the deeper consecration he 
offers to the Union, will consecrate himself 
to the South. Have no ambition but to be 
first at her feet and last at her service 
no hope, but, after a long life of devotion, 
to sink to sleep in her bosom, as a little 
child sleeps at his mother's breast and 
rests untroubled in the light of her smile. 

" With such consecrated service, what 
could we not accomplish ; what riches 
we should gather for her ; what glory 
and prosperity we should render to the 



The New Soitth. 91 



Union ; what blessings we should gather 
unto the universal harvest of humanity ! 
As I think ot \\, a vision of surpassing 
beauty unfolds to my eyes. I see a South 
the home of fifty millions of people ; her 
cities vast hives of industry ; her coun- 
try-sides the treasures from which their 
resources are drawn ; her streams vocal 
with whirring spindles ; her valleys tran- 
quil in the white and gold of the harvest ; 
her mountains showering down the 
music of bells, as her slow-moving flocks 
and herds go forth from their folds ; her 
rulers honest and her people loving, and 
her homes happy and her hearthstones 
bright, and their waters still, and their 
pastures green, and her conscience clear ; 
her wealth diffused and poor-houses 



92 The New South, 



empty, her churches earnest and all 
creeds lost in the gospel. Peace and 
sobriety walking hand in hand through 
her borders ; honor in her homes ; up- 
rightness in her midst, plenty in her fields, 
straight and simple faith in the hearts of 
her sons and daughters ; her two races 
walking together in peace and content- 
ment ; sunshine everywhere and all the 
time, and night falling on her gently as 
from the wings of the unseen dove. 

" All this, my country, and more can 
we do for you. As I look, the vision 
grows, the splendor deepens, the horizon 
falls back, the skies open their everlasting 
gates, and the glory of the Almighty 
God streams through as He looks down 
on His people, who have given them- 



The New South, 93 

selves unto Him and leads them from 
one triumph to another until they have 
reached a glory unspeakable, and the 
whirling stars in their courses shall not 
look down on a better people or a happier 
land." 

The most difficult problem which Mr. 
Grady undertook to solve was the race 
problem. To the solution of this ques- 
tion he addressed himself — to use his 
own words, many times repeated — '' with 
a sense of consecration." It enlisted the 
deepest sympathies of his heart ; it over- 
shadowed him with awful portentous- 
ness. But his sense of the vast, the over- 
whelming importance of this problem is 
best stated by himself : 
*' The future holds a problem, in solv- 



94 The Nezu South. 



ing which the South must stand alone ; 
in dealing with which, she must come 
closer together than ambition or despair 
has driven her, and on the outcome of 
which her very existence depends. This 
problem is to carry within her body poli- 
tic two separate races, equal in civil and 
political rights, and nearly equal in num- 
bers. She must carry these races in 
peace ; for discord means ruin. She 
must carry them separately ; for assimila- 
tion means debasement. She must carry 
them in equal justice ; for to this she is 
pledged in honor and in gratitude. She 
must carry them even unto the end ; for 
in human probability she will never be 
quit of either. 

'' This burden no other people bears 



The New South, 95 



to-day— on none hath it ever rested. 
Without precedent or companionship the 
South must bear this problem— the awful 
responsibility of which should win the 
sympathy of all human kind, and the pro- 
tecting watchfulness of God— alone, even 
unto the end. Set by this problem apart 
from all other peoples of the earth, and 
her unique position emphasized rather 
than relieved, as I shall show hereafter, 
by her material conditions, it is not only 
fit but it is essential that she should hold 
her brotherhood unimpaired, quicken 
her sympathies, and in the light or in the 
shadows of this surpassing problem, 
work out her own salvation in the fear of 
God— but of God alone. 

'' What shall the South do to be saved ? 



96 The New South. 

Through what paths shall she reach the 
end? Through what travail or what 
splendors shall she give to the Union 
this section, its wealth garnered, its 
resources utilized, and its rehabilitation 
complete, and restore to the world this 
problem, solved in such justice as the 
finite mind can measure, or finite hands 
can administer?" 

In order that this problem might be 
rightly solved, Mr. Grady thought it was 
necessary for the Southern people to 
have clear and just ideas of the negro 
character and of the negro situation. He 
expressed his own views on this subject 
with frankness and eloquence, saying : 

'' 1 approach this discussion with a 
sense of consecration. I beg your patient 



The New South. 97 

and cordial sympathy. And I invoke the 
Almighty God that, having showered on 
this people His fullest riches, He has put 
their hands to this task. He will draw 
near unto us, as He drew near to troubled 
Israel, and lead us in the ways of honor 
and uprightness, even through a pillar of 
cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by 
night. 

" What of the negro ? This of him. I 
want no better friend than the black boy 
who was raised by my side, and who is 
now trudging patiently, with downcast 
eyes and shambling figure, through his 
lowly way in life. I want no sweeter 
music than the crooning of my old 
' mammy,' now dead and gone to rest, as 
I heard it when she held me in her loving 



98 The New South. 

arms, and bending her old black face 
above me stole the cares from my brain, 
and led me smiling into sleep. I want no 
truer soul than that which moved the 
trusty slave, who for four years, while 
my father fought with the armies that 
barred his freedom, slept every night at 
my mother's chamber door, holding her 
and her children as safe as if her husband 
stood guard, and ready to lay down his 
humble life on her threshold. History 
has no parallel to the faith kept by the 
negro in the South during the war. 
Often five hundred negroes to a single 
white man, and yet through these dusky 
throngs the women and children walked 
in safety, and the unprotected homes 
rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the black 



The New South. 99 

battalions moved patiently to the fields in 
the morning to feed the armies their idle- 
ness would have starved, and at night 
gathered anxiously at the big house to 
* hear the news from marster,' though 
conscious that his victory made their 
chains enduring. Everywhere humble 
and kindly. The body guard of the help- 
less. The rough companion of the little 
ones. The observant friend. The silent 
sentry in his lowly cabin. The shrewd 
counsellor. And when the dead came 
home, a mourner at the open grave. A 
thousand torches would have disbanded 
every Southern army, but not one was 
lighted. When the master, going to a 
war in which slavery was involved, said 
to his slave, * I leave my home and loved 



lOO The New South. 

ones in your charge/ the tenderness 
between man and master stood disclosed. 
And when the slave held that charge 
sacred through storm and temptation, he 
gave new meaning to faith and loyalty. 
I rejoice that when freedom came to him 
after years of waiting, it was all the 
sweeter, because the black hands from 
which the shackles fell were stainless of 
a single crime against the helpless ones 
confided to his care. 

" From this root imbedded in a cen- 
tury of kind and constant companionship 
has sprung some foliage. As no race 
had ever lived in such unresisting bon- 
dage, none was ever hurried with such 
swiftness through freedom into power. 
Into hands still trembling from the blow 



The Nezu Sottth. 



lOI 



that broke the shackles, was thrust the 
ballot. In less than twelve months from 
the day he walked down the furrow a 
slave, the negro dictated in legislative 
halls, from which Davis and Calhoun had 
gone forth, the policy of twelve com- 
aionwealths. When his late master pro- 
tested against his misrule, the federal 
drum-beat rolled around his strongholds, 
and from a hedge of federal bayonets he' 
grinned in good-natured insolence. 
From the proven incapacity of that day 
has he far advanced? Simple, credu- 
lous, impulsive-easily led, and too often 
easily bought, is he a safer, more intelli- 
gent citizen now than then? Is this 
mass of votes, loosed from old re- 
straints, inviting alliance or awaiting 



I02 The Nczu South. 

opportunity, less menacing than when 
its purpose was plain and its way di- 
rect r 

Mr. Grady took generous and com- 
mendable pride in setting forth how 
rapid has been the advancement of the 
negroes in industry, education and 
wealth ; how millions of dollars a year 
are expended by the Southern States for 
negro schools, and how the possessions 
of the blacks have increased until their 
taxable property amounts to tens of mil- 
lions of dollars. In short, Mr. Grady 
maintained that, all things considered, 
the advancement of the negroes of the 
South in wealth, worth and intelligence 
during the last fifteen years is unpar- 
alleled. And now comes the crucial 



The New South. 103 

problem, What social position shall 
this vast colored population — which is so 
prosperous, and so rapidly rising in the 
human scale — what social position shall 
this race which is so affectionate, so 
loyal and so trustworthy occupy in the 
South ; what portion of political influence 
— if any portion at all — shall it be per- 
mitted to wield ? On these points Mr. 
Grady speaks in trumpet tones. I quote 
from his Dallas speech : 

" The men who coming from afar off 
view this subject through the cold eye 
of speculation or see it distorted through 
partisan glasses, insist that, directly or 
indirectly, the negro race shall be in con- 
trol of the affairs of the South. We have 
no fears of this ; already we are attaching 



I04 The New South. 

to us the best elements of that race, and 
as we proceed our alliance will broaden. 
External pressure but irritates and 
impedes those who would put the negro 
race in supremacy, who would work 
against infallible decree, for the white 
race can never submit to its domination, 
because the white race is the superior 
race. But the supremacy of the white 
race of the South must be maintained 
forever, and the domination of the negro 
race resisted at all points and at all 
hazards, because the white race is the 
superior race. This is the declaration of 
no new truth ; it has abided forever in 
the marrow of our bones and shall run 
forever with the blood that feeds Anglo- 
Saxon hearts. 



The New South. 105 

" In political compliance the South has 
evaded the truth, and men have drifted 
from their convictions. But we cannot 
escape this issue. It faces us wherever 
we turn. It is an issue that has been, and 
will be. The races and tribes of earth 
are of Divine origin. Behind the laws of 
man and the decrees of war stands the 
law of God. What God hath separated 
let no man join together. The Indian, 
the Malay, the Negro, the Caucasian, 
these types stand as markers of God's 
will. Let not man tinker with the work 
of the Almighty. Unity of civilization, 
no more than unity of faith, will never be 
witnessed on earth. No race has risen 
or will rise above its ordained place. 
Here is the pivotal fact of this great 



io6 The New South. 

matter — two races are made equal in law, 
and in political rights, between whom 
the caste of race has set an impassable 
gulf. This gulf is bridged by a statute, 
and the races are urged to cross thereon. 
This cannot be. The fiat of the 
Almighty has gone forth, and in eighteen 
centuries of history it is written. We 
would escape this issue if we could. 
From the depths of its soul the South 
invokes from heaven ' peace on earth 
and good will to man.' She would not 
if she could cast this race back into the 
condition from which it was righteously 
raised. She would not deny its smallest 
or abridge its fullest privilege. Not to 
lift this burden forever from her people, 
would she do the least of these things. 



The New South. 107 

She must walk through the valley of the 
shadow, for God has so ordained. But He 
has ordained that she shall walk in that 
integrity of race that created in His wis- 
dom, has been perpetuated in His 
strength. Standing in the presence of 
this multitude, sobered with the respon- 
sibility of the message I deliver to the 
young men of the South, I declare that 
the truth above all others to be worn 
unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be 
surrendered to no force, sold for no price, 
compromised in no necessity, but 
cherished and defended as the covenant 
of your prosperity, and the pledge of 
peace to your children, is, that the white 
race must dominate forever in the South, 
because it is the white race, and superior 



io8 The New Sotcth. 

to that race with which its supremacy 
is threatened. 

" It is a race issue. Let us come to this 
point, and stand here. Here the air is 
pure and the light is clear, and here honor 
and peace abide. Juggling and evasion 
deceive not a man. Compromise and sub- 
servience have carried not a point. 
There is not a white man North or South 
who does not feel it stir in the gray mat- 
ter of his brain and throb in his heart. 
Not a negro who does not feel its power. 
It is not a sectional issue. It speaks in 
Ohio, and in Georgia. It speaks wher- 
ever the Anglo-Saxon touches an alien 
race. It has just spoken in universally 
approved legislation in excluding the 
Chinaman from our gates, not for his 



The Nezu Soitt/i. jog 



ignorance or corruption, but because he 
sought to establish an inferior race in a 
republic fashioned in the wisdom and 
defended by the blood of a homogeneous 
people. 

" The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated 
always and everywhere. It fed Alfred 
when he wrote the charter of English 
liberty ; it gathered about Hampden as 
as he stood beneath the oak ; it thundered 
in Cromwell's veins as he fought his 
king; it humbled Napoleon at Waterloo; 
it has touched the desert and jungle with 
undying glory ; it carried the drum-beat 
of England around the world and spread 
on every continent the gospel of liberty 
and of God ; it established this republic, 
carved it from the wilderness, conquered 



I lo The New South. 

it from the Indians, wrested it from 
England, and at last, stilling its own 
tumult, consecrated it forever as the 
home of the Anglo-Saxon, and the theatre 
of his transcending achievement. Never 
one foot of it can be surrendered, while 
that blood lives in American veins and 
feeds American hearts, to the domination 
of an alien and inferior race.' 

Mr. Grady seeks to fortify his position 
and reinforce his argument by introduc- 
ing considerations which he believed, and 
had good reason to believe, would be 
received with approbation by thousands 
of his fellow-countrymen in all parts of 
the Union. He says : 

'* This problem is not only enduring, 
but it is widening. The exclusion oi the 



The Neiv Sotith. 



1 1 1 



Chinese is the first step in the revolution 
that shall save liberty and law and relig- 
ion to this land, and in peace and order, 
not enforced on the gallows or at the 
bayonet's end, but proceeding from the 
heart of an harmonious people, shall 
secure in the enjoyment of these rights, 
and the control of this republic, the 
homogeneous people that established and 
has maintained it. The next step will be 
taken when some brave statesman, look- 
ing Demagogy in the face, shall move to 
call to the stranger at our gates, * Who 
comes here ?' admitting every man who 
seeks a home, or honors our institutions, 
and whose habit and blood will run with 
the native current ; but excluding all who 
seek to plant anarchy or to establish alien 



112 The New South. 



men or measures on our soil ; and will 
then demand that the standard of our 
citizenship be lifted and the right of 
acquiring our suffrage be abridged. 
When that day comes, and God speed its 
coming, the position of the South will be 
fully understood, and everywhere 
approved. Until then, let us— giving the 
negro every right, civil and political, 
measured in that fullness the strong should 
always accord the weak— holding him in 
closer friendship and sympathy than he is 
held by those who would crucify us for 
his sake— realizing that on his prosperity 
ours depends— let us resolve that never 
by external pressure or internal division 
shall he establish domination, directly or 
indirectly, over that race that every where 



The New South. 



has maintained its supremacy. Let this 
resolution be cast on the lines of equity 
and justice. Let it be the pledge of hon- 
est, safe and impartial administration, and 
we shall command the support of the 
colored race itself, more dependent than 
any other on the bounty and protection 
of government. Let us be wise and 
patient, and we shall secure through its 
acquiescence what otherwise we should 
win through conflict, and hold in inse- 
curity. 

" All this is no unkindness to the negro 
— but rather that he may be led in equal 
rights, and in peace to his uttermost 
goodo Not in sectionalism — for my 
heart beats true to the Union, to the 
glory of which your life and heart are 



TI4 The New South. 

pledged. Not in disregard of the 
world's opinion — for to render back this 
problem in the world's approval is the 
sum of my ambition, and the height of 
human achievement. Not in reactionary 
spirit — but rather to make clear that new 
and grander way up which the South is 
marching to higher destiny, and on which 
I would not halt her for all the spoils 
that have been gathered unto parties 
since Catiline conspired, and Cassar 
fought. Not in passion, my country- 
men, but in reason — not in narrowness, 
but in breadth — that we may solve this 
problem in calmness, and in truth, and 
lifting its shadows let perpetual sunshine 
pour down on two races, walking to- 
gether in peace and contentmento Then 



The Nezu South. 1 1 5 

shall this problem have proved our bles- 
sing, and the race that threatened our 
ruin work our salvation as it fills our 
fields with the best peasantry the world 
has ever seen. Then the South — putting 
behind her all the achievements of her 
past — and in war and in peace they 
beggar eulogy — may stand upright 
among the nations and challenge the 
judgment of man and the approval of 
God, in having worked out in their sym- 
pathy and in His guidance, this last and 
surpassing miracle of human govern- 
ment." 

In a speech delivered before a great 
multitude at Augusta, Ga., in November, 
1888, Mn Grady presented his case in 



ii6 The Nezv South. 

a manner peculiarly interesting to the 
Northern mind : 

" Let us send to-day a few words to the 
fair-minded Republicans of the North. 
Here is a fundamental assertion — the 
negroes of the South can never be kept 
in antagonism with their white neighbors 
— for the intimacy and friendliness of 
the relation forbids. This friendliness, 
the most important factor of the prob- 
lem, the saving factor now as always, 
the North has never, and it appears will 
never, take account of. It explains that 
otherwise inexplicable thing — the fidelity 
and loyalty of the negro during the war 
to the women and children left in his 
care. Had ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' por- 
trayed the habit rather than the excep- 



The New South. 



tion of slavery, the return of the Confed- 
erate armies could not have stayed the 
horrors of arson and murder their 
departure would have invited. Instead 
of that, witness the miracle of the slave 
in loyalty closing the fetters about his 
own limbs, maintaining- the families of 
those who fought against his freedom, 
and at night on the far-off battle-field 
searching among the carnage for his 
young master, that he might lift the 
dying head to his humble breast and 
with rough hands wipe the blood away 
and bend his tender ear to catch the last 
words for the old ones at home, wres- 
tling meanwhile in agony and love, that 
in vicarious sacrifice he would have laid 
down his life in his master's stead. 



ii8 The New South, 

This friendliness, thank God, has sur- 
vived the lapse of years, the interruption 
of factions and the violence of campaigns 
in which the bayonet fortified and the 
drum-beat inspired. Though unsus- 
pected in slavery, it explains the miracle 
of '64 ; though not yet confessed, it must 
explain the miracle of 1888. 

*' Can a Northern man dealing with 
casual servants, querulous, sensitive and 
lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, 
understand the close relationship of the 
races of the South ? Can he comprehend 
the open-hearted, sympathetic negro, 
contented in his place, full of gossip and 
comradeship, the companion of the hunt, 
the frolic, the furrow and the home,, 
standing in kindly dependence that is the 



The New South. 119 

habit of his blood, and lifting not his eyes 
beyond the narrow horizon that shuts 
him in with his neighbors? This rela- 
tion may be interrupted, but permanent 
estrangement can never come between 
these two races. It is upon this that the 
South depends. By fair dealing and by 
sympathy to deepen this friendship and 
add thereto the moral effect of the better 
elements compacted, with the wealth and 
intelligence and influence lodged therein 
— it is this upon which the South has 
relied for years, and upon which she will 
rest in future. Against this no outside 
power can prevail. That there has been 
violence, is admitted. There has also 
been brutality in the North. But I do 
not believe there was a negro voter in the 



I20 The New South, 

South kept away from the polls by fear 
of violence in the late election. I believe 
there were fewer votes miscounted in the 
South than in the North. Even in those 
localities where violence once occurred, 
wiser counsels have prevailed, and reli- 
ance is placed on those higher and legiti- 
mate and inexorable methods, by which 
the superior race always dominates, and 
by which intelligence and integrity 
always resist the domination of ignorance 
and corruption. If the honest Republi- 
cans of the North permit a scheme of 
federal supervision, based on the assump- 
tion of intimidated voters and a false 
count, they will blunder from the start, 
for, beginning in error, they will end in 
worse. This whole matter should be 



The New South. 121 

left now with the people with whom it 
must be left at last — that people most 
interested in its honorable settlement. 
External pressure but irritates and 
delays. The South has voluntarily laid 
down the certainty of power which divid- 
ing her States would bring, that she 
might solve this problem in the delibera- 
tion and the calmness it demands. She 
turns away from spoils, knowing that to 
struggle for them would bring irritation 
to endanger greater things. She post- 
pones reforms and surrenders economic 
convictions, that unembarrassed she may 
deal with this great issue. And she 
pledges her sacred honor — by all that 
she has won, and all that she has suffered 
—that she will settle this problem in such 



122 The New South. 

full and exact justice as the finite 
mind can measure, or finite hands admin- 
ister. On this pledge she asks the 
patience and waiting judgment of the 
world, and especially of the people — her 
brothers and her kindred — that in passion 
forced this problem into the keeping of 
her helpless hands." 

However strongly Mr. Grady's passion- 
ate appeals may take hold of the sympathy 
of Northern men it is not probable that his 
arguments will much affect their judgment. 
Indeed, Mr. Grady's proposed solution 
of the race problem has not escaped dissi- 
dent criticism in the South. To some 
minds in that section it seems to be lacking 
in practicalness, to others it seems to be 
wanting in coherency. Mr. Grady says 



The New South. 123 

that the South must settle this question ; 
but these dissidents ask : " Who is the 
South? What is the South? Are not 
the eight million negroes, with their in- 
numerable schools and churches, their 
millions upon millions of property, their 
rapidly growing worth and intelligence, 
their affectionate dispositions, their 
loyalty and trustworthiness, a part of the 
South ? No one will deny that they are 
a part of the South, and a very important 
part. Are they, then, not to have any 
voice at all in the settlement of this 
momentous question ? If they are not, 
then it is not the South in its entirety, 
but only the white people of the South 
who are to solve and settle the racial 
problem." 



124 "^^^^ New South. 

That is just what Mr. Grady says in 
plain words, and he repeats it over and 
over again in express terms. When he 
varies the expression and says that the 
South must settle the race problem, he 
means that the white people of the South 
must settle it. Notwithstanding Mr. 
Grady's exuberant affection for the 
negroes, notwithstanding his surpassingly 
eloquent tributes to their loyalty and trust- 
worthiness, notwithstanding his genuine 
appreciation of the best traits of their 
character, notwithstanding his ardent 
desire that they should enjoy all the 
blessings which are compatible with their 
racial relations, when it comes to the set- 
tlement of the race problem by the 
South, the negroes, according to his 



The New South. 125 

views, are no part whatever of that South 
which is to settle it. His language, pre- 
viously quoted, is : 

• '' The supremacy of the white race of 
the South must be maintained for ever, 
and the domination of the negro race 
resisted at all points and at all hazards, 
because the white race is the superior 
race. This is the declaration of no new 
truth ; it has abided forever in the 
marrow of our bones and shall run for- 
ever with the blood that feeds Anglo- 
Saxon hearts." 

In his speech at Augusta, Mr. Grady 
stated his position on this point in still 
stronger terms. After referring to some 
severe Northern utterances on the sub- 
ject, he said : 



126 The New South. 



" No answer can be made in passion to 
these men. If the temper of the North 
is expressed in their words the South can 
do nothing but rally her sons for their 
last defence and await in silence what the 
future may bring. This much should be 
said. The negro can never be established 
in dominion over the white race of the 
South. The sword of Grant and the 
bayonets of his army could not maintain 
them in the supremacy they had won 
from the helplessness of our people. No 
sword drawn by mortal man, no army 
martialed by mortal hand, can replace 
them in the supremacy from which they 
were cast down by our people, for the 
Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise 
when He created these races, and the 



The New South. 127 

flawnting sword of His archangel will 
enforce His decree and work out His 
plan of unchangeable wisdom." 

The plain logic of this is that the 
negroes of the South must accept the 
domination of the whites, or there will 
be a racial war, with all the horrors 
which would attend such a strife. No 
wonder Mr. Grady invoked Divine aid 
when he attempted to present a solution 
of this problem, and sought to bring him- 
self and his fellow-citizens to the 
discussion of it in a spirit of consecration. 

It is to be regretted that in certain 
quarters there is a disposition to ridicule 
and censure Mr. Grady for what is called 
his fanciful treatment of the race prob- 
lem. It is easy to ridicule, it is easy to 



128 The New South. 

censure ; but it is not easy to originate a 
working theory or to formulate a practi- 
cal scheme for the settlement of such a 
stupendous question as the race problem 
in the South. I can readily understand 
how Northern men will, in the nature of 
things, disagree with Mr. Grady and 
reject his doctrines ; but I cannot see 
how they can have the heart to say one 
unkind word of him. He had the vivid 
imagination of a poet and the romantic 
enthusiasm of a knight-errant. These 
qualities entered largely into his elo- 
quence and sometimes gave a fanciful 
style to his rhetoric and too soft an edge 
to his logic, but they never lessened his 
sincerity nor chilled his generosity. No 
matter how we of the North may differ 



The New South. 129 



from him on the disintegrating question 
under consideration, his chivalric frank- 
ness, his boundless charity, his exuberant 
genius, his fervid patriotism, should com- 
mand our affectionate respect and arouse 
in us on his behalf the gracious qualities 
which he possessed in such generous 
fullness. 

As to the settlement of the race prob- 
lem in the near future, I, for one, give it 
up. It will be the remote future that 
will witness its settlement ; nor can we 
of the North do much to hasten that con- 
summation. I was in New Ulm, Minne- 
sota, early in the sixties, and there 1 
learned a lesson which is useful to me in 
this exigency. New Ulm was then on 
the confines of civilization, and there had 



30 The New South, 



recently been an Indian war in which the 
white settlers had suffered terribly. 
They took such bloody vengeance on 
their Indian foes that the inhabitants of 
the Eastern portion of the republic were 
horrified, and called on the government 
to interfere in behalf of the savages. 
The government did interfere, and much 
ill feeling was thereby caused among the 
whites. I chancing to be at New Ulm, 
and fervently cherishing the cultivated 
sentiments of the East on the Indian 
question, I thought I would look into the 
matter, and give those rude men on the 
frontier the benefit of my cultured East- 
ern opinion. It was unfortunate that my 
effort in behalf of humanity was made in 
a company of excited men, every one of 



The New So7tth. 131 



whom had suffered from Indian atroci- 
ties. The scene which followed, 
although it was somewhat trying to my 
nerves at the time, has been to me a source 
of solemn amusement ever since. Before 
I had had a fair chance to develop, in all 
its cultured attractiveness, my Eastern 
theory as to the proper settlement of the 
red-race problem, a very wild Western 
man sprang at me with a most uncul- 
tured yell, and wanted to know what in 
h — I meant by such talk. His ungentle- 
manly movement seemed to be epidemic, 
for it spread to every man in the com- 
pany. They all gathered around me, 
and in sulphurous terms hurled at me the 
same infernal adjuration. They were 
convulsed with rage, and their threaten- 



The New South, 



ing conduct was distasteful to one Avho 
had passed his life in polite society. One 
brawny fellow cried : 

" What would you say if you came 
home some night, and found your cabin 
burnt, and your wife and children scalped, 
and their throats cut, and their bodies half- 
burnt in the ruins, and your baby — your 
poor, little baby nailed up on a tree 
alive? Ali-i-ive I Do you hear me, you 
Down-East skunk ?" 

I should not have tolerated such lan- 
guage in an Eastern drawing-room, but 
in the street of a wild Western town, 
and surrounded by men Avho were 
obviously indisposed to recognize the 
usages of cultured society, I could only 
maintain a dignified reserve. When I 



The New Soicth, 133 

learned, as I soon did, that the man who 
thus addressed me had actually come 
home to the scene he had asked my 
opinion of, my heart melted at the 
thought of his agony, and I forgave his 
uncultured manner. In fact, as one man 
after another told the story of his wrongs 
and sufferings, my sympathy made me 
akin with them, and we came to a friendly 
understanding. I afterwards looked into 
the red-race problem, and became con- 
vinced, and I am still convinced that it is 
impossible for us Eastern people to 
settle that problem in a way that 
would be satisfactory to frontiermen 
whose cabins Indians have burned, whose 
families Indians have massacred, and 



134 ^^^^ New South. 

whose live babies Indians have nailed to 
trees. 

And as it with the red-race problem 
so, in a measure, is it with the black-race 
problem. Those who are not in it and of 
it can do but little towards its settlement. 
The red-race problem is being rapidly 
settled by the extinction of the red men, 
but the black-race problem cannot be 
settled in that way. It will abide ; how 
long, no man can tell ; but, as Mr. Grady 
so .often said, '' the South must carry it to 
the end." 

The Scandinavian god Thor was once 
ordered to lift a cat clear of the earth. 
Supposing the feat to be an easy one he 
took hold of the cat and lifted her at 
arms' length, but she did not leave the 



The New Soicth, 135 

earth. He lifted her to the tree tops ; 
still she touched the earth. He lifted 
her to the clouds ; she yet rested on the 
earth. He rubbed her back against the 
sky ; she still touched the earth, and 
Thor was then permitted to see that the 
cat was only a part of the great serpent 
that stretches around all the world, and 
so could not be lifted from the earth. 
The race problem of the South may be 
likened to that mythological cat ; it is an 
integral part of the great serpent of self- 
ishness which coils itself in every human 
heart and runs through all human 
society ; and not even a god can now 
lift the problem high enough to see the 
daylight of solution beneath it. The 
good old orthodox doctrine of total 



136 The Nciu SoittJi, 



depravity teaches us that selfishness is 
native to every human heart and at 
bottom shapes and controls the action of 
every human community. Fortunately, 
this crude selfishness is capable of becom- 
ing refined and elevated, and is in fact 
constantly becoming refined and elevated 
into enlightened self-interest. Then it 
begins to yield to Christian influences ; 
then it ameliorates the social status, works 
along lines of human progress, and in 
conjunction with increasing intelligence 
and spiritual forces it dissipates religious 
superstitions, abolishes national evils, 
rectifies gigantic wrongs, and raises soci- 
ety to the plane of Christian brother- 
hood. 

It is this grand, broad, deep sweep of 



The Nezv South. 137 

things which Avill eventually settle the 
great Southern problem. It cannot be 
settled off-hand, nor by this generation. 
Time will take care of it. Time will 
teach the South how to solve it — is, in 
truth, now rapidly teaching her. Her 
resources will in time be developed 
beyond even Mr. Grady's most roseate 
hopes ; unimaginable riches will be hers ; 
her vast territory will teem with myriads 
ol intelligent citizens, and the enlight- 
ened self-interest of these myriads will, 
in the long run, and under the provi- 
dence of God, and possibly through 
great tribulation, enable them com- 
pletely to solve this seemingly unsolv- 
able Southern problem. Mr. Grady him- 
self seems to have had a prevision that 



138 The New Soicth. 

this would be the ultimate outcome of 
the question, as appears by the following 
extract (a few lines of which I italicise) 
from his speech at Augusta : 

" In her industrial growth the South is 
daily making new friends. Every dollar 
of Northern money invested in the South 
gives us a new friend in that section. 
Every settler among us raises up new 
witnesses to our fairness, sincerity and 
loyalty. We shall secure from the North 
more friendliness and sympathy, more 
champions and friends, through the influ- 
ence of our industrial growth, than 
through political aspiration or achieve- 
ment. Few men can comprehend — 
would that I had the time to dwell on 
this point to-day — how vast has been the 



The Nczu SotttJi. 139 

development, how swift the growth, and 
how deep and enduring is laid the basis 
of even greater growth in the future. 
Companies of immigrants sent down from 
the sturdy settlers of the North will solve 
the Southern problem, and bring this sec- 
tion into full and harmonious relations 
with the North quicker than all the bat- 
talions that could be armed and martialed 
could do." 

In his letters to the New York Ledger 
on The New South, Mr. Grady gave 
to the world the gist and essence of all 
that he had been inspired to write on that 
subject b}^ his love for the land of his 
birth, by his pride in her worth and by 
his hope in her destiny. These letters 
evidently came hot from his heart ; they 



140 The New South, 

are freighted with information, are pic- 
turesque in description, fervid and elo- 
quent in style, honest in purpose and 
noble in spirit. They will long be 
treasured as the latest and ripest utter- 
ances of the remarkable man who wrote 
them, upon the theme which was nearest 
his heart, which inspired his genius, and 
which will be forever associated with his 
memory. 



THE 

NEW SOUTH 



BY 

HENRY W. GRADY. 



NEW YORK: 

ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 

1890. 



Copyright, 1889. 
By ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 

(AU rights reserved.) - 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW YORK LEDGER 

NEW YORK. 



THE NEW SOUTH 



By henry W. GRADY. 



CHAPTER I. 

In this letter, and those that foHow, I 
shaH discuss one of the most interesting 
regions of the civiHzed world — the theater 
of the most gigantic war of history — the 
residence of 5,000,000 manumitted slaves 
now grown to be 8,000,000 enfranchised 
freemen — the source, practically, of the 
supply of the most important staple 
of the soil — the richest treasury of miner- 



142 The New South. 



als and woods — the home of a people 
that in swift and amazing recuperation 
have discounted the miracle wrought by 
the French people after the Franco-Prus- 
sian war, and have given new glory. to 
the American name, and a new meaning 
to energy — that section of our country 
known as '■' The South." 

We shall see how the people of this 
section, reduced to poverty by a war, the 
causes, progress and result of which are 
beyond this purview, have found honor- 
able way to Avealth and prosperity. We 
shall see how they bestirred themselves 
cheerfully, amid the ashes and waste of 
their homes ; how they met new and 
adverse conditions with unquailing cour- 
age ; how they gave themselves cordially 



The New South. 143 



to unaccustomed work ; with what 
patience they bore misfortune, and 
endured wrongs put upon them through 
the surviving passions of the war, empha- 
sized by partisan appeals. How, having 
worn the enforced yoke of their late 
slaves until it became insupportable, they 
rallied amid the graves of the dead and 
the wrecks of their fortunes for the last 
defense of their liberty and credit. And 
how, at last controlling with their own 
hands their local affairs, they began, in 
ragged and torn battalions, that march of 
restoration and development that has 
challenged universal admiration. We 
shall see how the war-horses went to the 
furrow. How the waste places were 
clothed. How the earth smiled at their 



144 ^^^ New South, 



rude and questioning touch. How the 
mountains opened and disclosed treasures 
not dreamed of before. How, from chaos 
and desolation, the currents of trade 
trickled and swelled and took orderly 
way. How rivers were spanned and the 
wildernesses pierced with iron rail. How 
things despised in the old days of pros- 
perity, in adversity won unexpected 
value. How frugality came with mis- 
fortune, fortitude with sorrow, and with 
necessity invention. And how, above 
all, an AU-Avise Hand, disclosing new 
resources by little less than miracles, led 
this God-fearing and God-loving people, 
whom He had chastened, into the ways of 
peace and prosperity. 

No people ever held larger stewardship 



The New South. 145 

than the people of the South. It is theirs 
to settle the problem of the two races, 
vastly the most important matter with 
which the Republic has to deal. It is 
theirs to produce and enlarge the crop of 
that staple that largely clothes the world. 
It is theirs to conserve and develop the 
final and fullest supply of coal and iron, 
and to furnish from their enormous for- 
ests the lumber and hard woods to meet 
the world's demand until exhausted areas 
can be recovered. It is theirs to bring 
the matchless domain that is their home 
up to the full requirements of its duty to 
the world at large, until every debt is 
discharged, every right relation estab- 
lished, every obligation met, and industry 



46 The New South, 



and civilization find no obstruction from 
one of its limits to the other. 

The new South is simply the old South 
under new conditions. It rejoices that 
slavery has been swept forever from 
American soil. It rejoices that the 
American Union was saved from the 
storm of Avar. Not one in a thousand ol 
its sons would reverse if they could the 
results of the war into which they threw 
without stint their lives and their prop- 
erty. They are thankful that the issues 
at stake in the great civil war were ad- 
judged by higher wisdom than their own. 
And the Republic has no better citizens in 
peace and would have no braver soldiers 
in war than the men who twenty-five 



The New Soicth, 147 

years ago wore the gray and followed 
the Confederate flag. 

The courage in which the new South 
makes these declarations, and the sincer- 
ity in which it maintains them, are a herit- 
age of the old South. If it involved the 
surrender of perfect love and reverence 
for that civilization that produced Wash- 
ington and Jefferson, and Clay and Cal- 
houn — or for the memory of those who 
fought with Lee and Jackson and Johns- 
ton — the new South would be dumb and 
motionless. It is from the foot of the 
monuments, illumined with the names of 
her dead, that she makes her fullest re- 
nunciation of the past and her best pledge 
for the future. Always she will honor 
above all men the men who sleep beneath 



148 The New South, 

those towering shafts. The sign of nobil- 
ity in her families for generations to 
come will be the gray cap or the stained 
coat, on which, in the ebb of losing battle, 
God laid the sword of His imperishable 
knighthood. Those, who ask her to turn 
away from the memory of her heroes 
who died hopeless but unfearing in de- 
feat, ask her to sacrifice that without 
which no people can be steadfast or 
great. 

Hardly less dear to the new South 
than this is the memory of the old regime^ 
its traditions and its history. Perhaps no 
period of human history has been more 
misjudged and less understood than the 
slave-holding era in the South. Slavery 
as an institution cannot be defended — but 



The Nczu South. 149 

its administi ation was so nearly perfect 
among our forefathers as to challenge and 
hold our loving respect. It is doubtful 
if the world has seen a peasantry so 
happy and so well-to-do as the negro 
slaves in America. The world was 
amazed at the fidelity with which these 
slaves guarded, from 1861 to 1865, the 
homes and families of the masters who 
were fighting with the army that barred 
their way to freedom. If '' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin " had portrayed the rule of slavery 
rather than the rarest exception, not all the 
armies that went to the field could have 
stayed the flood of rapine and arson and 
.pillage that would have started with the 
first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, 



150 The New South. 

witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty 
to his master, closing the fetters upon 
his own limbs — maintaining and defending 
the families of those who fought against 
his freedom — and at night on the far-off 
battle-field searching among the carnage 
for his young master, that he might lift 
the dying head to his breast and bend to 
catch the last words to the old folks at 
home, so wrestling the meantime in 
agony and love that he would lay down 
his life in his master's stead. 

History has no parallel to the faith 
kept by the negro in the South during the 
war. Often five hundred negroes to a 
single white man, and yet through these 
dusky throngs the women and children 
walked in safety, and the unprotected 



The New South. 151 

homes rested in peace. Unmarshaled, 
the black battalions moved patiently to 
the fields in the morning to feed the 
armies their idleness would have starved, 
and at night gathered anxiously at the 
big house to " hear the news from mars- 
ter," though conscious that his victory 
made their chains enduring. Every- 
where humble and kindly. The body- 
guard of the helpless. The rough com- 
panion of the little ones. The observant 
friend. The silent sentry in his lowly 
cabin. The shrewd counselor. And 
when the dead came home, a mourner at 
the open grave. A thousand torches 
would have disbanded every Southern 
army, but not one was lighted. When 
the master, going to a war in which 



152 The New South, 

slavery was involved, said to his slave, 
" I leave my home and loved ones in 
your charge," the tenderness between 
man and master stood disclosed. 

The Northern man, dealing with casual 
servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged 
for a day in a sphere they resent, can 
hardly comprehend the friendliness and 
sympathy that existed between the mas- 
ter and the slave. He cannot understand 
how the negro stood in slavery days, 
open-hearted and sympathetic, full of 
gossip and comradeship, the companion 
of the hunt, frolic, furrow and home, 
contented in the kindly, dependence that 
has been a habit of his blood, and never 
lifting his eyes beyond the narrow hori- 
zon that shut him in with his neighbors 



The New South, 153 

and friends. But this relation did exist 
in the days of slavery. It was the rule of 
that regime. It has survived war, and 
strife, and political campaigns in which 
the drum-beat inspired and Federal bay- 
onets fortified. It will never die until 
the last slave-holder and slave have been 
gathered to rest. It is the glory of our 
past in the South. It is the answer to 
abuse and slander. It is the hope of 
our future 

The relations of the races in slavery 
must be clearly understood to under- 
stand what has followed, and to judge of 
what is yet to come. Not less important 
is it to have some clear idea of the civil- 
ization of that period. 

That was a peculiar society. Almost 



154 The New South. 

feudal in its splendor, it was almost 
patriarchal in its simplicity. Leisure and 
wealth gave it exquisite culture. Its 
wives and mothers, exempt from drudg- 
ery, and almost from care, gave to their 
sons, through patient and constant train- 
ing, something of their own grace and 
gentleness, and to their homes beauty 
and light. Its people, homogeneous by 
necessity, held straight and simple faith, 
and were religious to a marked degree 
along the old lines of Christian belief. 
This same homogeneity bred a hospitality 
that was as kinsmen to kinsmen, and that 
wasted at the threshold of every home 
what the more frugal people of the 
North conserved and invested in public 
charities. The code duello furnished the 



The Neiu South. 155 



highest appeal in dispute. An affront to 
a lad was answered at the pistol's mouth. 
The sense of quick responsibility tem- 
pered the tongues of even the most violent, 
and the newspapers of South Carolina for 
eight years, it is said, did not contain one 
abusive word. The ownership of slaves, 
even more than of realty, held families 
steadfast on their estates, and everywhere 
prevailed the sociability of established 
neighborhoods. Money counted least in 
making the social status, and constantly 
ambitious and brilliant youngsters from 
no estate married into the families oi 
planter princes. Meanwhile the one 
character utterly condemned and ostra- 
cized was the man who was mean to his 
slaves. Even the coward was pitied and 



156 The New Sotith, 

might have been liked. For the cruel 
master there was no toleration. 

The ante-belliun society had immense 
force. Working under the slavery which 
brought the suspicion or hostility of the 
world, and which practically beleaguered 
it within walls, it yet accomplished good 
things. For the first sixty-four years ot 
the republic it furnished the president 
for fifty-two years. Its statesmen 
demanded the war of 1812, opened it 
with but five Northern senators support- 
ing it, and its general, Jackson, won the 
decisive battle of New Orleans. It was 
a Southern statesman who added the 
Louisiana territory of more than 1,000,- 
000 square miles to our domain. Under 
a Southern statesman, Florida was' 



The Nezu South. 157 

acquired from Spain. Against the oppo- 
sition of the free States, the Southern 
influence forced the war with Mexico, 
and annexed the superb empire of Texas, 
brought in New Mexico, and opened the 
gates of the Republic to the Pacific. 
Scott and Taylor, the heroes of the Mex- 
ican war, were Southern men. In 
material, as in political affairs, the old 
South was masterful. The first import- 
ant railroad operated in America trav- 
ersed Carolina. The first steamer that 
crossed the ocean cleared from Savannah. 
The first college established for girls was 
opened in Georgia. No naturalist has 
surpassed Audubon ; no geographer 
equaled Maury ; and Sims and McDon- 
ald led the world of surgery in their 



158 The New Sotith. 

respective lines. It was Crawford Long, 
of Georgia, who gave to the world the 
priceless blessing of ansesthesia. The 
wealth accumulated by the people was 
marvelous. And, though it is held that 
slavery enriched the poor at the general 
expense, Georgia and Carolina were the 
richest States, per capita, in the Union in 
i860, saving Rhode Island.^ Some idea 
of the desolation of war may be had 
from the fact that, in spite of their late 
remarkable recuperation, they are now, 
excepting Idaho, the poorest States, 
per capita, in the Union. So rich was 
the South in i860, that Mr. Lincoln spoke 
but common sentiment when he said : 
*' If Ave let the South go, where shall we 
get our revenues ?" 



The Nezv South. 159 

In its engaging grace — in the chivalry 
that tempered even Quixotism with dig- 
nity — in the piety that saved master and 
slave alike — in the charity that boasted 
not — in the honor, held above estate — in 
the hospitality that neither condescended 
nor cringed — in frankness and heartiness 
and wholesome comradeship — in the rev- 
erence paid to womanhood and the 
inviolable respect in which woman's 
name was held — the civilization of the 
old slave regime in the South has not 
been surpassed, and perhaps will not be 
equaled, among men. 

And as the fidelity of the slave during 
the war bespoke the kindness of the mas- 
ter before the war, so the unquestioning 
reverence with which the young men of 



i6o The Nezv Sotit/i, 

the South accepted, in 1865, their heri- 
tage of poverty and defeat, proved the 
strength and excellence of the civilization 
from which that heritage had come. In 
cheerfulness they bestirred themselves 
amid the ashes and the Avrecks, and, hold- 
ing the inspiration of their past to be bet- 
ter than their rich acres and garnered 
wealth, went out to rebuild their fallen 
fortunes, with never a word of complaint, 
nor the thought of criticism ! 



So much for the past of the South — 
and only in so much as it must affect the 
future. The South is still held by a 
homogeneous people, and its salvation 
must be wrought by the descendants of 



The New South. i6i 

those who have made its history. There 
is no appreciable infusion of new blood. 
And the old blood in its descending- 
strains will scarcely mount higher, run 
more clearly or resolutely, flow more 
freely at duty's call or stain less where it 
touches, than in the turbulent and strenu- 
ous days that are gone. In devotion, in 
courage, in earnestness, in ability, the 
sons shall not surpass their fathers. 
Happy will it be for them and for theirs 
if in these cardinal virtues they equal 
them ! 

But the sons fight under new condi- 
tions, for greater ends, in broader fields. 
The blight of slavery is lifted from above 
and about them. The wall that shut 
them in is leveled, and the South stands 



162 The Nezu So2Uh. 

in unhindered comradeship with the 
world. Doubt or aversion does not 
withhold, nor does ostracism repel the 
uttermost stranger from her gates. The 
promise of her great destiny, written in 
her fields, her quarries, her mines, her 
forests, and her rivers, is no longer 
blurred or indistinct, and the world 
draws near to read. 

How rapidly she has adapted herself 
to these new conditions — how she has 
grown to the requirements of her larger 
duty — how she has builded from pitiful 
resources a great and expanding empire, 
these letters shall now proceed to tell. 
And the writer will find a keener pleas- 
ure in relating, as his people have found 
in amassing, in the knowledge that every 



The New South. 163 

blow struck for the South and every 
sheaf gathered to her harvest have also 
deepened the glory and prosperity of 
this Republic, that, conceived in Ameri- 
can wisdom, won by American valor, 
sustained in American hearts, is at last 
indissolubly cemented with the best of 
American blood. 



164 The New South. 



CHAPTER II. 

When my business partner came home 
from the war, in which he had gallantly 
commanded a battery, he had neither 
breeches, home nor money. His wife 
cut up a woolen dress she had worn for 
years, and made him a pair of breeches. 
Gathering odds and ends from the ruins 
of Atlanta, he built a shanty, of which 
love made a home. His father gave him 
a five-dollar gold piece, of which ingenu- 
ity made capital. In three years he had 
built a $1,500 *home — in eight years a 
$6,000 home. He now has a $60,000 
suburban home and is worth well over 



The Nezu SoictJi. 165 



a quarter of a million dollars. His life is 
an epitome of the South in 1865— its 
swift energy— its cheerful heroism— its 
shrewd knack of turning something from 
nothing— its stages of growth— and its 
present prosperity. 

The people of Atlanta in 1864 crept 
out of the diagonal holes cut, like 
swallows' nests, in the hillsides, in 
which they had abided the siege, to find 
their city in ruins. Old citizens could 
scarcely thread the course of familiar 
streets through ashes and debris. As 
the refugees straggled back, and the 
soldiers, afoot from Virginia, found 
once more their dismantled homes, the 
ruined city trembled with the energy 
of a camp. Strenuous as life had been in 



1 66 The New South, 

the South for four years, its most desper- 
ate struggle had but begun. The for- 
ittude of the march, the courage of 
the charge, the heroism of the retreat, 
the touching sacrifices of the ill-paid 
and ill-equipped soldier-life — these were 
to be emphasized and prolonged, when 
the tattered flag no longer flew, the quick 
roll of the drum had ceased, and the com- 
radeship of the camp and march was dis- 
solved. From defeat and utter poverty 
were to be wrought victory and plenty. 
There was no faltering — no repining — but 
Atlanta worked as she had fought, for all 
that was in her. Five hundred shanties 
were made of the iron roofing of de- 
stroyed buildings. Four posts were 
driven up — iron sheeting tacked about 



The New South. 167 

them, a cover laid, a door cut, and in 
these, with pitiful huckstering, was estab- 
lished the commercial system that now 
boasts its palatial stores, its merchant 
princes, and is known and honored the 
Republic over. In 1866, there were but 
four men in Atlanta worth $10,000. In 
1889, there are six millionaires whose 
wealth aggregates $10,000,000; nine 
others assessed at more than $750,000 
each ; fourteen others worth over $500,000 
each ; and twenty -one worth from $250,000 
to $500,000 each. These fifty citizens, 
now worth over $30,000,000, were not 
worth $250,000 in 1865. Back of them is 
a prosperous city filled with well-to-do 
people and capital of a prosperous State. 
How was this progress wrought? 



1 68 The New South. 



HIGH PRICES AND DESTITUTION. 

In 1864, a cavalryman was saluted by a 
citizen with : " I will give you $20,000 
for that horse." " The devil you will ! I 
just paid a nigger $1,000 for currying 
him !" About that time I paid $1,200 for 
two wool hats, such as now retail for ^Z- 
teen cents, the dealer having knocked off 
$300 in consideration of my taking the two. 
Enormous quantities of depreciated cur- 
rency were afloat, unsettling values and 
provoking reckless and desperate trading. 
So vast was the issue that Gen. Toombs 
charged that *' the treasury department 
ran the money presses all day and let the 
niggers run 'em all night to work their 



The New South. 169 

wages off." The depreciation of the cur- 
rency, however, did not hinder or w^arn 
the people who had staked all on the suc- 
cess of the Confederacy. No matter 
what a man bought, it would bring 
more money than he paid for it. The 
story is told of a speculator who bought 
several hogsheads of sugar at ten cents a 
pound, and sold at twenty cents. Shortly 
after, he invested his fortune in sugar at 
twenty-five cents, and sold it at forty, and 
so on to the end. Each time he made more 
money, but it would buy less sugar. He 
kept at it, adding to his increasing profit 
and decreasing quantity until he found 
himself, in 1865, with $2,000,000 clear 
profit on sugar, which would not buy 
enough to sweeten his parched-pea coffee. 



170 The New South, 

The day after Lee surrendered, a friend 
of mine sold for $110,000 in Confederate 
money a comfortable home. Notes given 
for slaves, which were free in a week, 
were sued, and pronounced valid by the 
supreme court. 

From this era of inflation, the Southern 
people dropped to complete destitution. 
The currency they had accumulated was 
valueless. The bonds they had stored 
for emergency were worthless. Their 
slaves were freed. Their governments 
destroyed. Their farms stripped by the 
foraging of two armies and the demands 
of two governments. Guerrillas of both 
sides plundered under cover of law. The 
swamps were ransacked for hidden 
stores or crops. The torch, carelessly 



The New South. 171 



and revengefully handled, completed the 
desolation. To meet this awful crisis and 
to rebuild from these pitiful resources, 
was a people stunned by defeat— with 
ranks decimated by war, partnerships sun- 
dered, every family circle broken, and 
those relations that had knit together 
families and neighborhoods forever shat- 
tered. There was dislocation every- 
where. And everywhere the weeds of 
the widowed and the cries of the father- 
less. In every country grave-yard there 
were new-made graves, and the Virginia 
valleys were red with the best blood of 
the South. Miriam and her hand-maidens 
were yet in the depths of the flood ! 



72 The New South. 



THE ERA OF SPECULATION. 

In the midst of this desolation, small 
eddies of trade whirled this way and that. 
A few men, shrewder than patriotic, had 
steadily bought gold for the past two 
years. They had traded Confederate 
bonds for diamonds or silver. Others 
had hidden cotton and tobacco in swamps 
or cellars, and found it good as gold when 
hauled from its hiding-place. There 
were garrisons of Federal troops in 
almost every town, paid off in green- 
backs, which went rapidly into circula- 
tion. The abnormal lack of money, and 
the pressing demand for it, tempted 
many sutlers to invest, and brought some 



The New Sotctk. 173 

money from the North. The city of 
Atlanta issued scrip, redeemable for 
taxes, and it passed current. Trading 
was fast and furious. Almost indescrib- 
able activity ensued, and, strangely 
enough, '' flush times " were on us before 
the ashes had been carted from the buried 
streets, and the lamentation of the 
bereaved had ceased. The recklessness 
of war was carried into the conservative 
ways of peace. The provisional and 
republican administration issued bonds 
and scattered money lavishly. The 
enforced abstinence of four years took its 
revenge in full gratification, and the sales 
of coffee, cheese, sardines, and like arti- 
cles, were astonishing. There was fever- 
ish tumult in all trading centers, great or 



I 74 The Nezv South. 



small, and there was neither time nor 
inclination to think of the past or future. 
In the country, excitement and specu- 
lation ran even higher. The few bales of 
cotton exhumed after the war readily 
brought sixty-five cents a pound, and the 
demand was eager and unsatisfied. At 
such prices, there was a fortune in every 
acre. The negroes, cat-like in their local 
attachment, had been jostled out of place 
but little, even by the passing armies. 
They were still ready to work, and 
appeared to think that freedom was justi- 
fied when they left their master's slave 
quarters and hired out to his neighbor. 
And so cotton became king. It had 
always been king, and the slave had been 
his prophet. These two the planter 



The New South. 175 

never surrendered to sentiment or law. 
An intelligent man would himself volun- 
teer, and call his sons, even to the 
mother's boy, to his side in the ranks, 
but would resist to the uttermost when 
his sorely pressed government attempted 
to levy one of his slaves. General 
Toombs, more responsible for the war 
than perhaps any other man, and pledg- 
ing to the Confederacy his life and his 
honor, openly rebelled when it proposed, 
that its starving armies might be fed, to 
limit by law the acreage each man 
should plant in cotton. And in '65, 
though its prophet was gone, cotton was 
king again. 

The demand for land was universal. 
Great plantations brought astonishing 



176 The New Sotith. 

prices. It was believed that cotton 
could be raised only scantily by free 
labor and that high prices would con- 
tinue. This delusion was fatal. It 
started the South wrong. It gave the 
local merchant credit at the North — and 
he in turn gave credit to the cotton 
grower. The planter would pledge his 
land to cotton — and put a lien on his 
crop. On this the merchant would 
advance him cash and supplies. This 
money, coming before it was earned, was 
easily spent ; and it is said that Atlanta 
sold more pianos at $600 apiece than 
were sold ten years later at $250. Under 
the stimulus of high prices for cotton, 
the Southern people loaded up with 
land at fancy figures, and then went 



The New Sotct/i. 177 



under lien to the merchant for cash and 
supplies. 

COTTON ONCE MORE KING. 

Cotton worth sixty -five cents in 1866 
brought only forty cents in 1867. This 
was still high enough to tempt reckless 
land-buying and reckless planting. In 
1868, it declined to eleven and one-quarter 
cents, but ran up in a few weeks to 
thirty-six cents. After this, it went down 
steadily, involving thousands in ruin. 
The Hon. B. H. Hill bought several 
plantations and stocked them lavishl}- on 
credit. He lost over $250,000 in his 
planting operations, and, although he 
coined more than a million dollars from 
his brain, was for years hampered with 



178 The New South. 

his losses. Land had practically no sell- 
ing value. Superb estates that had 
brought $200,000 dragged at $10,000, and 
estates that had sold for $65,000 went 
unhindered to the sheriff's hammer for 
taxes. Broader than these personal 
losses was the oppressive system 
entailed on the planting class. Having 
once mortgaged his crop for supplies to 
his merchant, the farmer was practically 
the slave of that merchant. Under the 
declining price of cotton his crop would 
barely pay his lien. He was thus left 
dependent for the next year's supplies 
on his merchant, who charged him what 
he pleased. The official report of the 
Commissioner of Agriculture of Georgia 
shows that an average of 54 per cent. 



The New South. 1 79 

usury was charged on all supplies sold 
to the farmer on credit, and that he 
bought his meat, bread, hay, stock, and 
often his butter and eggs, devoting his 
land entirely to cotton. When he saw 
the wisdom of raising his own corn, 
bacon, grasses and stock, he was notified 
that reducing his cotton acreage was 
reducing his line of credit. He was thus 
helpless. Carrying this burden of usury, 
and buying everything he needed, and 
having stocked his farm on credit, he 
made slow progress. How he pro- 
gressed shall be shown hereafter. Suffice 
it to say here that he gradually diversi- 
fied his agriculture, slowly paid his 
debts, and this year — for the first time 



i8o The New South, 

since 1859 — raised in Georgia all the 
corn that Georgia needs. 

The Southern merchants began busi- 
ness with an interest rate of five per 
cent, a month. It dropped rapidly to 
one and a half to two per cent, a month, 
and halted there stubbornly. As late as 
'78 Georgia issued a ten per cent. bond. 
She has since floated a four per cent., 
and money rules in Atlanta at from five 
to seven per cent. From its speculative 
beginning business steadied wonderfully 
quick in the South. The old soldiers 
traded as resolutely as they fought. 
There is a smaller percentage of failures 
in the South than in the West. Every 
city has its board of trade building, and 
well-equipped exchanges for its different 



The New South. ^ i8i 

departments of business. Commercial 
ethics are high, and business integrity is 
valued and respected among a people 
who for years had nothing but integrity 
as capital and credit. There are slightly 
more than fifty millionaires in the South, 
and of this number more than three- 
fourths made their fortunes in the legiti- 
mate buying and selling of goods. From 
Maryland through Texas the merchants 
are prosperous, public-spirited and able. 
In everything that has adorned the 
South they have been foremost and 
constant. 

THE CREATORS OF THE NEW SOUTH. 

Let me close this article with one 
point that may be carried through the 



1 82 The New South, 

series. The South has been re-built by 
the Southern people. I shall often use 
Atlanta as an example, for it is a typical 
Southern city. None is more generally 
thought to be so largely the result of 
Northern capital and enterprise. And 
yet the census of 1880 shows that of 
47,588 people in Fulton county (of 
which Atlanta is the capital), less than 
1,000 were of Northern birth. This will 
astound those Northern men who, 
amazed at Atlanta's simple and compre- 
hensive growth, have declared the South 
never had built and never could build 
such a city, but that it was a " Yankee 
city " in the South. Let me particular- 
ize. The census shows that of the 47,588 
people in Fulton county, 38,648 were 



The New South, 183 



born in Georgia. Of the rest, 2,102 were 
born in South Carolina, 752 in North 
Carolina, 1,464 in Alabama, 1,200 in Vir- 
ginia, 795. in Tennessee, and 472 in other 
Southern States. This gives us 44,951 
Southern born. To this add 1,391 for- 
eigners, and we have 46,814. Deduct 
this from the total, 47,588, and we have 
774 as the total of Northern-born citizens 
of Atlanta. This is the city that is often- 
est cited as a '' Northern city in the 
South." Since i860 the South has lost 
nearly one-fourth of its foreign born pop- 
ulation in spite of the tremendous tide of 
foreign immigration that flows in at 
Northern ports. Further — the South 
had less Northern-born citizens in 1880 
than in i860. In the eight South Atlan- 



184 The New South. 

tic States there were even fewer 
Northerners in 1880 than in 1870. In 
Georgia in 1870 there were 6,613 citi- 
zens of foreign birth; in 1880 only 
5,848 — this in a total population of 
1,542,180. In 1880 there were 139,971 
more Southern people living North 
than Northern people living South. 

The South has been rebuilt by South- 
ern brains and energy. 

THE SOUTH IS AMERICAN AND RELIGIOUS. 

We regret that our brothers from the 
North have not taken larger part with us 
in this work. We have also watched 
with regret the great current of immi- 
gration sweeping westward, giving us 
nothing and even absorbing into its 



The New Sottth, 185 

mighty volume one-fourth of what for- 
eigners we already had. But our status 
has its compensations. It has given us a 
homogeneous people — compact, earnest, 
sympathetic, and united when unity 
means more of safety than it ever meant 
to any people before. It has left us the 
straight and simple faith of our fathers, 
untainted by heresy and unweakened by 
speculation. The spirit of Americanism 
—•of popular liberty, of love for demo- 
cratic principles and institutions — burns 
steadily and unobstructedly here. An- 
archy, socialism — that leveling spirit that 
defies government and denies God — has 
no hold in the South. Here the old 
churches are the best churches, and the 
old creeds still living and saving. Here 



1 86 The New South. 

law and order reign. Here government 
is supreme, and if we love well that gov- 
ernment which touches us most closely, 
we love none the less that government 
which, above all, blesses all. 

It may be — it may well be, unless some 
brave statesman shall challenge the incom 
ing hosts at our ports, and demand that 
they shall be worthy of citizenship before 
it is bestowed upon them — that in the 
South, here amid this homogeneous and 
God-fearing people, may be lodged the 
last hope of saving the old fashion in our 
religious and political government. 
While, therefore, we welcome immi- 
grants to our matchless domain, we pre- 
fer that they shall come in beseeming 
order rather than pell-mell — as friends and 



The New South. 187 

neighbors, to mingle their blood with 
ours, to build their homes in our fields, 
honoring our Constitution, reverencing 
our God. Until such immigrants come 
we prefer to work out our own salvation, 
as we have largely done for twenty-five 
long and strenuous years. 

How well we have done this in the 
line of agriculture and manufacturing 
the succeeding article will tell. 



1 88 The New South. 



CHAPTER III. 

A few years ago I told, in a speech, of 
a burial in Pickens county, Georgia. 
The grave was dug through solid marble, 
but the marble headstone came from 
Vermont. It was in a pine wilderness, 
but the pine cofFm came from Cincinnati. 
An iron mountain overshadowed it, but 
the cofhn nails and screws and the shovels 
came from Pittsburg. With hard woods 
and metals abounding, the corpse was 
hauled on a wagon from South Bend, 
Indiana. A hickory grove grew near by, 
but the pick and shovel handles came 
from New York. The cotton shirt on the 



The New SotctJi. 189 

dead man came from Cincinnati, the coat 
and breeches from Chicago, the shoes 
from Boston ; the folded hands were 
encased in white gloves from New York, 
and round the poor neck, that had worn 
all its living days the bondage of lost 
opportunity, was twisted a cheap cravat 
from Philadelphia. That country, so 
rich in undeveloped resources, furnished 
nothing for the funeral except the corpse 
and the hole in the ground, and would 
probably have imported both of those if 
it could have done so. And as the poor 
fellow was lowered to his rest, on coffin 
bands from Lowell, he carried nothing 
into the next world as a reminder of his 
home in this, save the halted blood in his 
veins, the chilled marrow in liis bones. 



IQO The New South. 

and the echo of the dull clods that fell on 
his coffin lid. 

There are now more than $3,000,000 
invested in marble quarries and machin- 
ery around that grave. Its pitiful loneli- 
ness is broken with the rumble of ponder- 
ous machines, and a strange tumult per- 
vades the wilderness. Twenty miles 
away, the largest marble-cutting works in 
the world put to shame in a thousand 
"shapes its modest headstone. Forty 
miles away four coffin factories, with 
their exquisite work, tempt the world to 
die. The iron hills are gashed and 
swarm with workmen. Forty cotton 
mills in a near radius weave infinite 
cloth that neighboring shops make into 
countless shirts. There are shoe fac- 



The New South. 191 

tories, nail factories, shovel and pick fac- 
tories, and carriage factories, to supply 
the other wants. And that country can 
now get up as nice a funeral, native and 
home-made, as you would wish to have. 

IRON BECOMING KING. 

The industrial growth of the South in 
the past ten years has been without pre- 
cedent or parallel. It has been a great 
revolution, effected in peace. How, from 
poverty, such progress has been wrought 
can be told only in figures. Words can- 
not compass it. Let us then to figures ! 
We start with iron, which is the base of 
all industrial progress. In 1880 the South 
made 212,000 tons of iron. In 1887 she 
made 845,000 tons — thus quadrupling her 



192 The New South. 

output in seven years. But this is small 
compared to the future. The South is 
now building, or has already finished since 
1887, thirty-two iron furnaces with a capac- 
ity of 3,400 tons per day or over 900,000 
tons a year. In 1890 her output will be 
about 1,800,000 tons, although it was but 
212,000 tons in 1880. In 1889 the Bir 
mingham district alone will produce more 
iron than the entire South produced in 
1 887. This growth is not remarkable when 
we consider that iron can be made in the 
South from one to three dollars a ton 
cheaper than in the North. Mr. R. P. Roth- 
well, editor of the Mining and Engineering 
Journal of New York, saw pig iron made 
in the South at an actual cost of $7.30 a 
ton, to which he added, for '' renewals 



The Nezv South. 193 

and incidentals," one dollar, making- the 
cost $8.30 a ton. An English expert of 
the highest character says : 

"The South will not only control the 
iron market of the North, but of Eng- 
land." 

Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, who has just 
invested largely in Southern furnaces, 
said, referring to Alabama : 

" This will be a region of coke-made 
iron on a grander scale than has ever 
been witnessed on the habitable globe." 

Mr. Lowthian Bell, of England, after 
investigating for a year, reported to the 
Iron and Steel Institute of England : 

" Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama will 
prove a match for any part of the world 
in iron-makinof. Iron can be made there 



'194 'I^^^^ Nczu Sotith. 

at little more than half the cost of the 
North." 

Mr. Samuel Thomas, of the Lehigh 
Valley furnaces, has just finished at Bir- 
mingham the finest two furnaces in the 
world, and says iron can be made much 
cheaper there than in the North. The 
South is already naming the price for 
iron in the North. Had General Toombs 
said, when he was reported to have said 
he would call the roll of his slaves at 
Bunker Hill, instead, he would bring 
iron from the slave States, through Pitts- 
burg, and undersell Pennsylvania at 
Bunker Hill, he would have made quite 
as surprising and a much more truthful 
remark. For just that thing has been 
done ! The magnitude of the iron busi- 



The New South. 195 



ness in the South is shown in the opera- 
tions of the Tennessee Coal and Iron 
Company. It has a capital of $10,000,000. 
From its five furnaces, in blast in 1887, it 
turned out more iron than the Thomas 
Iron Company, of Pennsylvania, with 
twelve furnaces. And it is now adding, 
or has since then added, five more fur- 
naces and steel works. It ships its pro- 
duct to Canada, California, and every 
intervening State and Territory. 

It is an axiom in our new iron region 
that " An iron furnace is like godliness. 
Have that, and all the rest shall be added 
unto you !" From this theory the 
" magic cities " of the South have sprung. 
Of the growth of these, let the story of 



196 The New South. 

Birmingham give proof. That city was 
founded in about '72. 

MARVELOUS GROWTH OF A SOUTHERN 
CITY. 

With $12,000 the Ely ton Land Com- 
pany, composed of about twelve South- 
ern men, bought 5,000 acres of land, and 
laid off a city. There were mountains of 
iron and acres of coal adjoining ; and this 
was the basis for the city. When the 
first sale of lots occurred, the auctioneer 
got lost in the Avilderness about dusk, and 
discovered by his own placards, which he 
accidentally stumbled over, that he was on 
the corner of Sixty-fifth street and Fifth 
Avenue. The $12,000 of paid-in capital 
was converted into $200,000 of stock, 



lite New Sotcth. 197 

making 2,000 shares of $100 each. On 
this capital $5,500,000 in cash dividends 
have been paid. Every dollar invested 
was once worth $4,000 in open market, 
and every dollar is now worth $2,500, and 
more than $5,000 in cash dividends have 
been paid on each dollar invested. In 
one year the taxable value of Jefferson 
county, in which Birmingham is located, 
rose $14,000,000. Land has sold at $3,000 
a front foot. A man worth $4,000 started 
a home to cost $1,500. Before he had fin- 
ished it he was worth $500,000, enlarged 
his plans for his home, and paid $18,000 
for the hard-wood finish of its facings and 
staircases. Such a tremendous hive of 
industry as Birmingham is can hardly be 
found elsewhere in America. It is nota- 



198 The New South. 

ble that the projectors — the men who 
have made fortunes in this city — are 
Southern men, without an exception. 

The iron furnaces, better than building 
cities, have opened the way to collateral 
industries. In 1870 the South mined but 
3,193,100 tons of coal; in 1880, 6,049,471 
tons. In 1887 she mined 14,620,000 tons. 
In 1880 her production of coke was 299,- 
430 tons ; in 1885 (the last figures I have 
in mind) 603,105 tons. Not less, certainly, 
than this development of coal and coke 
have the iron furnaces given stimulus to 
smaller iron industries. The cost of 
shipping so heavy a thing as iron to the 
North, to be made into gins, plows, 
stoves, and like heavy goods, and the 
cost of shipping them back, tempted cap- 



The Nezo South. 199 



ital into shops and factories. Mr. Perry, 
a large stove-maker of Albany, N. Y., 
who lately established immense stove 
works in Tennessee, stated in print that 
he saved $20 a ton on freight by supply- 
ing his Southern trade from Southern 
works. Many factories have found the 
freight-saving the fullest percentage of 
profit they needed. Rolling mills were 
the first industries that followed the fur- 
naces. Gins and cotton presses were 
close to these. Plows and cotton plant- 
ers followed. Then came stoves, hollow- 
ware, nails, piping, and sash stuff. After 
these came bridge works, engine and 
boiler factories, chain works, car works 
and locomotive works. Excellent saws 
are now made in the South. The logical 



200 The New South, 

movement of supplying the local market 
with goods made at home, of home-made 
iron, rather than paying these heavy 
freights, gave the local factories such suc- 
cess that they rapidly extended their 
field. Atlanta now sends plows into 
Mexico, and ships agricultural imple- 
ments to Central America. She is even 
competing Avith the North in nearer 
markets, and we have our eyes on the 
Pan-American delegates now traveling 
over the continent. They shall not 
escape to their homes without being told 
in indifferent Spanish that the South is 
their nearest and their best market. 

The growth of the iron industries pro- 
voked other ventures. In Atlanta the 
best gold watches are now made, the 



The New South. 201 



finest pianos, double concave razors and 
sewing-machines. In Birmingham pins, 
in Gainesville matches. It is curious to 
note how the industries of the South 
have been built up, step by step, and how 
the system has grown of its own growth. 
A few years ago a firm in Atlanta began 
making paper bags. It sold these all 
over America, having a branch* depot in 
Chicago. It then added cloth bags. It 
then built a cotton factory to supply the 
cloth for its bags. Later it doubled the 
factory. And now it has just added a 
bleachery at a cost of $100,000 to prepare 
the cloth. A number of men established 
successful proprietary medicines in 
Atlanta. Two box factories followed — 
and now a glass and bottle factory, with 



202 The Nezv South. 

$90,000 capital, supplies them with 
bottles. Each item grows out of another. 
And so vast and varied are our 
resources that the system is a miracle of 
success and expansion. The last census 
shows that Atlanta stands third in the 
list of American cities in the proportion 
of actual workers to entire population. 
Lawrence, Mass., is first ; Lowell, Mass., 
second ; and Fall River, Mass., and 
Atlanta, Ga., tie at third place ! 

UNPARALLELED DEVELOPMENT. 

Here is a wider instance of how one 
industry in the South has brought others 
into being : Cotton seed on the old plan- 
tation was burned, or dumped into rivers 
as worthless. It was after slavery was 



The New So2ith. 203 



abolished that some one discovered the 
seed was a good fertilizer, and it was 
then covered into the worn cotton fields. 
Then it was found it made a good food 
for cattle and sheep. After awhile some 
one pressed thirty-five gallons of oil out 
of a ton of seed, and sold the oil for 
thirty-five cents a gallon. He found that 
the seed, stripped of the oil, was better 
food and fertilizer than when it was so 
rich and heavy. Experiments with the 
oil developed that it could be refined up 
to $1 a gallon, at which figure it is sent 
to Italy and shipped back as olive oil. 
The hulls, first used as fuel and their 
residue sold as potash, now prove to be 
excellent food for cattle. The refuse 
makes the best and cheapest soap stock. 



204 The New South, 



To treat this pregnant seed and adapt its 
riches, a vast and complicated system of 
factories was needed. Over one hundred 
and eighty immense cotton-seed-oil mills, 
costing $100,000 each, grind the seed, 
and over fifty refineries, costing half as 
much, clarify and improve it. An enor- 
mous system of acid chambers and fer- 
tilizer mills have followed, to work the 
cotton-seed meal of the oil mills into 
fertilizers. In Georgia alone $1,826,000 
have been invested in ten years in fertil- 
izer factories that work up mainly Caro- 
lina phosphates, Georgia cotton meal, 
and native iron pyrites for sulphur. 
Ten years ago Georgia imported every 
ton of her fertilizers, usually high-priced 
guanos. Last year 202,000 tons, of fer- 



The New SoutL 20; 



tilizers, worth $5,500,cxxd, were sold in 
Georgia, and the Georgia factories pro- 
duced 165,000 tons, worth over $4,000,- 
000. Then there are soap factories to 
convert the refuse of the oil mills into 
soap. And now, near each mill, are 
immense pens, in which thousands of cat- 
tle are fattened on the hulls. These, in 
turn, will lead to packing factories, and 
increase the fertilizer factories. The oil 
output of the cotton seed, fifteen years 
ago thrown away, represents $60,000,000 
a year, and the value of the meal and 
hulls for fertilizing or fattening stock, is 
$40,000,000 more. More than $40,000,000 
are invested in plants for the manufacture 
of its various products. Surely, God 
has led the people of the South into this 



2o6 The Nciu South, 

unexpected way of progress and pros- 
perity. 

From 1880 to 1887 there were invested 
in the South $260,000,000 in manufactur- 
ing. This put 225,000 mechanics to work 
that had hitherto been idle or at work 
elsewhere. As has been shown, each of 
these new industries is reason for another. 
The industrial system of the South re- 
sponds, grows, thrills with new life, and 
it is based on sure and certain founda- 
tions. For it is built at the field, by the 
mine, in the field — from which come the 
cheapest and best and fullest supply of 
cotton, iron and wood ! 

The industries of other sections — dis- 
tant from the source of supply — may be 
based on artificial conditions that in time 



The New Soiith. 



may be broken. But the industrial 
system of the South is built on a rock — 
and it cannot be shaken ! It is in the 
heart of the source of supply of iron, coal 
and wood — the great elements of all in- 
dustries ! 

In the next article will be treated the 
agriculture of the South and its growth, 
no less amazing than the story told above. 



2o8 The New SoictJi. 



CHAPTER IV. 

I was once riding through Lancaster 
county, Pa. — shown by the census of 1880 
to be the richest agricultural county in 
America. I was anxious to know by 
what means Lancaster had wrested from 
Duchess county, N. Y., this distinction. 
'* What's the secret of your supremacy ?" 
I asked a farmer. '' Tobacco," he re- 
plied. 

Shortly after, I was riding through a 
scorched and stricken strip of North 
Carolina — now happily reclaimed. T 
wondered what was the cause of the un- 



The Nezv South. 209 



thriftiness, and inquired. ''Tobacco/' 
was the reply. 

The difference was that in Carolina, 
tobacco was made the sole crop. In 
Lancaster it is made the crown and 
money crop of a diversified agriculture. 
The one crop system never made any 
people prosperous. It very nearly ruined 
the farmers of the South. I have shown 
in a former letter how the high price of 
cotton in 1866-9, put every available acre 
in the South in cotton— how the merchant 
advanced money and supplies, taking lien 
on the crop not yet planted. See how 
this worked. The farmer started with 
nothing, the war having robbed him. 
He bought on credit the bread and meat 
his labor consumed while it made his cot- 



2IO The Nezv South, 

ton, and borrowed money with which to 
pay the laborers' wages. He was thus in 
bondage to the money-lenders of the East 
and to the corn raisers and hay growers 
of the West. In this mad race between a 
money crop and a mortgage, the smaller 
industries of the farm were utterly 
neglected — the farmer bought his hams, 
his lard, his bacon, and often his butter 
and his fruit from the merchant. Cotton 
was king — and then a despot. 

WHAT COTTON DOES FOR THE SOUTH. 

Cotton is a plant worthy of homage. 
The soil has not yet given to the hand of 
man its equal. Let us see. This year's 
crop, 7,500,000 bales, will furnish 3,000,- 
000,000 pounds of lint, which would clothe 



The New South. 211 



in a cotton suit every human being on 
earth, and yield to Southern farmers $350,- 
000,000 in cash. The lint sold, there will 
be left 3,750,000 tons of seed. This will 
supply 150,000,000 gallons of oil, which, 
sold at forty cents a gallon, will bring $60,- 
000,000. Or it may be reduced to lard, 
when it will produce 1,125,000,000 pounds 
of edible fat. This grease, healthful and 
nutritious, is equal in pounds to 5,625,000 
hogs of 200 pounds each. Allow 200 
pounds of edible fat to one person per 
annum, and this would keep in meat 
5,625,000 citizens. But this wonderful 
plant is not exhausted. After the seeds 
are stripped of lint, and the oil pressed 
from the seeds, there remain the hulls 
and the meal. Of each ton, the oil takes 



212 



The New South, 



only 250 pounds, leaving 1,000 pounds of 
hull and 750 pounds of cake or meal. 
This is unequaled as a fertilizer, of which 
we should have left 3,000,000 tons. But 
it is also the very best food for cattle or 
sheep. Fed to either, it will first make 
meat or wool, and then, as animal 
manure, go back to enrich the soil. Of 
stock food, it will furnish 6,568,500,000 
pounds, enough to stall-feed 1,175,000 
beeves for one year. These in turn 
would furnish meat for 6,000,000 more of 
people. Such are some of the possibili- 
ties of this royal plant. 

Those who read these stunning figures 
will hear with astonishment that the 
farmers who grow this plant are not the 
richest farmers in the world. And yet 



The New South. 



even more is to be said of its advantage. 
It gives to those who grow it a monop- 
oly that is beyond the reach of competi- 
tion. How important this is in these 
days when steam and electricity have 
annihilated distance, can be seen from a 
study of the situation. What other pro- 
duct does the American farmer grow, in 
growing which he is not thrown in direct 
competition with the cheap labor or 
boundless area of other countries } 

THE GREAT COMMERCIAL CHESSBOARD. 

Steam has made of the earth a chess- 
board, on which men play for markets. 
Our Western wheat grower competes in 
London with the Russian and the East 
India. The Ohio wool grower watches 



2 14 The New South. 



the Australian shepherd, and the bleat of 
the now historic sheep of Vermont is 
answered from the steppes of Asia. The 
herds that emerge from the dust of prairies 
might hear in their pauses the hoof-beats 
of antipodean herds marching to meet 
them. Under Holland's dykes, the 
cheese and butter makers fight American 
dairies. The hen cackles around the 
world. California challenges vine-clad 
France. The Dark Continent is dis- 
closed through meshes of light. There 
is competition everywhere. The hus- 
bandman driven from his market balances 
price against starvation, and undercuts 
his rival. This conflict often runs to 
panic, and profit vanishes. The Iowa 
farmer burning his corn for fuel is not an 



The New South, 215 

unusual type. Of all the American 
farmers the cotton grower is the one who 
is not driven almost to despair by com- 
petition. The mortgage-laden farms of 
the West, the deserted farms of New 
England — these tell the story of foreign 
competition. Even in our own land the 
occupation of new areas increases con- 
stantly the wheat and corn and grass 
acreage. It is estimated that the Powell 
survey of irrigable land makes an area 
eight times as large as Indiana. Add 
this to wheat and corn-producing lands, 
and at the same time withdraw the 
Southern States, now raising their own 
grain, from the list of purchasers, and 
what is the prospect ahead of the Ameri- 
can grain grower ? 



2i6 The Nczu SoittJi. 



But it may be urged that the cotton 
grower in the South has competition in 
Egypt, India, Brazil and Russia. Let 
the record answer. In 1872 the Ameri- 
can supply of cotton was 3,241,000 bales. 
The foreign supply, 3,036,000 bales. At 
that time the world had been for twelve 
years seeking a substitute for American 
cotton. For five years the Southern 
ports had been shut by war, and all that 
ingenuity could do had been done to pro- 
mote cotton culture in foreign countries. 
The result was that America made 
hardly 200,000 bales in excess of her for- 
eign rivals. That was in 1872. In the 
year 1888 the American supply was 
8,000,000 bales ; the foreign supply, 
2,100,000 bales; both expressed in 



The New South. 217 



English bales. So that, in spite of new 
areas opened elsewhere, of fuller experi- 
ence, of spreading civilization, of better 
transportation, of unlimited money spent 
in experiment, the foreign supply of cot- 
ton has decreased since 1872 nearly 
1,000,000 bales, while the Southern sup- 
ply has increased nearly 5,000,000 bales. 
That shows that the monopoly of the 
South is not only fixed, but deepening. 
Cotton is yearly becoming more popular 
Since 1872 the population in Europe has 
increased 13 percent.; cotton consump- 
tion has increased 50 per cent. Cotton is 
steadily driving out wool and flax. 
Since 1880 cotton consumption in Europe 
has increased 28 per cent., the consump- 
tion of wool only 4 per cent., while the 



2i8 The Nezu South, 

consumption of flax has decreased 1 1 per 
cent. As for new areas, the uttermost 
missionary wooes the heathen with a cot- 
ton shirt in one hand and the Bible in the 
other, and no savage, I believe, has ever 
been converted to one without having 
first put on the other. Not only is the 
Southern monopoly in cotton fixed, but 
it is broadening. In the past three years 
the crop has increased 1,400,000 bales, 
and yet the fixed supply of cotton has 
grown less each year. The present 
year's crop of 7,500,000 bales will be 
taken and consumed, and 8,000,000 bales 
will be needed next year. Within five 
years the South will sell 10,000,000 bales 
of cotton in a single crop, and will 
receive from lint and seed not less than 



The New Soict/i, 219 

$6c)0,ocx),ooo. This stupendous income 
is not doled out to each farmer at starva- 
tion prices to meet driving- competition 
elsewhere, but it is paid to farmers who 
control a monopoly, and who, practically, 
fix their own prices. This enormous 
stream of money flowing into the South 
every year — the result of a monopoly 
that can neither be destroyed nor dimin- 
ished — must in the near future make the 
South exceedingly rich. 

A SOUTHERN TEST. 

The Atlanta Constitution, which has a 
weekly circulation of 130,000, has 
preached for ten years from this text : 
'' If the South can keep at home the 
$400,000,000 it gets annually for its cot- 



2 20 The New South. 

ton crop, it will soon be rich beyond 
competition. As long as she sends it out 
for the supplies that make the crop, she 
will remain poor." Slow but tremen- 
dous changes have come. In one year 
the oat crop of Georgia went up from 
2,200,000 bushels to 9,000,000. The 
South, in 1888, raised 393,000,000 bushels 
of grain in excess of what was raised in 
1872, and added 182,000,000 head to her 
herds and flocks. This was accomplished 
by pulling slowly out of debt, and plant- 
ing a patch of corn or wheat here and 
there, as the obligation with the mer- 
chant permitted. This immense increase 
in food crops and stock has not dimin- 
ished the cotton crop, which, as I have 
shown, has been increased by 5,000,000 



IJie New South. 221 



bales. This year, it is agreed, the South 
has grown such crops as her soil never 
before produced. The seasons have been 
perfect, and the land has simply pro- 
duced all it could carry. Back of this 
bountiful crop is the fact that it was 
made at least 25 per cent, cheaper than 
any crop since the War. The Farmers' 
Alliance, with 120,000 members in Geor- 
gia alone, pledged its members to closest 
economy, effected co-operative buying 
which reduced prices, and used co-opera- 
tive credit which abolished usury. The 
farmer, therefore, bought less and 
bought cheaper. 

The result is not only instant but gen- 
eral elation. It means practical clearing 
up of the current debts of the Southern 



222 The Nciv South. 

farmer, and hereafter that he will plant 
as a free man. This, in turn, means wiser 
and better agriculture. 

Naturally, the grain and grass crops 
have brought to the South the smaller 
husbandries of the farm. The hen-coop 
and the dairy follow wheat and clover. 
How bare the Southern farms have been 
of these small industries can hardly be 
understood. I have studied the com- 
mission houses of Atlanta, only to find 
poultry from Ohio, onions from St. 
Louis, eggs from Indiana, butter from 
New York, potatoes from Illinois, apples 
from Michigan, hams from Louisville, 
canned goods from Maine or California. 
Not one item from Georgia. 

The reasons for this were manifest. 



The New South. 223 

Cotton absorbed eveiything. Without 
barns and granaries there was no barn- 
yard. Nor was there much inducement 
to raise truck or poultry. There were 
few and insufficient markets. There 
were no canning or preserving factories in 
which the surplus could be marketed. 
Facilities for transportation were scant, 
schedules slow, and prices high. With 
increase in urban population — with shops 
and factories and artisans — with great 
systems of railroads and consequent re- 
duction of time and freights — with can- 
ning factories and evaporators — came 
farm husbandry in its true sense to the 
South. Georgia now realizes more than 
$1,000,000 a year from melons alone. 
From Chattanooga berry trains run solid 



2 24 ^-^^ New South. 

to the North. Poultry trains traverse 
East Tennessee, three or four a day. 
Ships are loaded at Charleston and Sav- 
annah with early vegetables and fruits 
for the East. The largest peach orchard 
in the world is in Georgia, owned by a 
brother of Charles Stewart Parnell. One 
peach-grower at Marshallville, Ga., de- 
posited in bank $64,000 this year as pro- 
fits from peaches. In Mississippi cream- 
eries are established successfully. From 
Putnam county, Georgia, the express 
company took, last year, 90,000 pounds of 
Jersey butter, and six years ago that 
county imported all its butter. The ad- 
vantage of the South in these petty indus- 
tries of the farm is manifold. The season 
is five or six weeks earlier than in the 



The New South, 225 

North, and the South thus gets first and 
best prices in the Northern market. 
Lands and labor are cheaper here, the 
seasons are longer, two or three crops 
being grown from the same land. These 
advantages have set out orchards, vine- 
yards, patches from one end of the South 
to the other. 

SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE BROADENING. 

An excursion of Georgia farmers went 
to Ohio this fall on a special train, to 
study the dairies and the cheese factories 
of that State. They came back with this 
declaration : " If Ohio farmers find but- 
ter and cheese-making profitable on land 
worth $300 an acre, with a grazing sea- 
son of six months, we can certainly find 



2 26 The New South, 

it profitable with equally good lands at 
$5 to $io an acre and a grazing season of 
ten months." In addition to this, the 
cattle need very little shelter in winter. 
The result will be an immediate impetus 
in the South to grass and cattle. 

Every step in the South has been made 
through slow and costly experiment. 
The value of cotton seed was discovered 
after millions of dollars had been wasted. 
Irish potatoes were grown for ten )^ears 
before a variety was found that would 
stand shipping. For six years the farm- 
ers shipped culls and imperfect melons 
before they found that it paid best to ship 
fine melons. The curse of the farm be- 
fore the war was Bermuda grass. There 
was no way to kill it, and when it got 



The New South, 227 

hold of a piece of land it was abandoned 
as hopeless. It is now found that Ber- 
muda grass gives the best pasturage for 
cattle and the best results in hay, and a 
farm set in Bermuda will bring $20 an 
acre, while the same land without it will 
sell for $5. From six to eight tons of 
sweet, nutritious hay, commanding $20 
per ton, can be taken from an acre of 
Bermuda. It is estimated that 50,000 
acres will be set in Bermuda grass in 
Georgia this year. 

Grass means more cattle, and more 
cattle means better cattle. Mr. Edward 
Atkinson, of Boston, says : 

" The farmers of no section on earth 
have ever had such opportunity as the 
Southern farmers who adopt this plan. 



2 28 The New South, 



Plant alternate lots of grass and cotton ; 
run cattle and sheep on the grass lots; 
feed them in the winter with cotton seed 
hulls and meal. Put back the soil in 
animal manure the fertilizing qualities of 
cotton seed cake and hulls. Every year or 
two alternate cotton lots with grass. By 
these lots have orchards, corn, wheat, and 
truck patches. The cotton lint, the oil, 
the wool, mutton and beef, and the sur- 
plus fruit, furnish money crops not 
equaled on earth. The grass, cotton 
seed hulls and cake keep the stock, 
while the wheat and corn and truck 
patches support the family." 

I know that this combination is not sur- 
passed elsewhere on earth. Add to it 
perfect climate, cheap and abundant lands 



The Nezu South. 229 



and labor, good schools and churches, 
a hospitable people, and you have con 
ditions of advantage that ought to fill 
the South with thrifty farmers from 
the North. The one difficulty, the 
inadequacy of the home market, is 
rapidly disappearing. As I showed you, 
in eight years the South increased the 
number of its artisans 242,000. Cities 
are growing as if by magic, and good 
markets are being built up in every 
county. The other difficulty of poor 
and high transportation has been sur- 
mounted. The railroad systems of the 
South are equal to those of any other 
section and are under control of State 
commission law. 



The New South. 



Such, in a hurried sense, is an out- 
line of the growth of agriculture at the 
South in the past ten years, and its 
possibilities for the future. 



The New South, 231 



CHAPTER V. 

The race problem casts the only shad- 
ow that rests on the South. Truly 
the negro avenges the wrongs put upon 
him by the New England traders who 
brought him from Africa, and the South- 
ern slave-holders who held him in bond- 
age. For fifty years he estranged the 
sections of this Republic. For five years 
he was a central figure, if not the direct 
cause of desolating war. And for twenty- 
six years of freedom he has presented 
a problem that perplexes the wisest 
minds, again estranges the sections, 
touches with doubt all Southern enter- 



The New South. 



prise, and that problem deepens, it is to 
be feared, as the years go by. Shall we 
ever see the end of the trouble that came 
with the slave traffic and slave-holding ? 
Let us see precisely what the problem 
is. It is to carry in peace and honor and 
prosperity two dissimilar races with 
equal civil and political rights and nearly 
equal in number, on the same soil. No 
two races have ever lived in peace in the 
same fields, save when one was in com- 
plete subjection to the other. Wherever 
whites and blacks have met, in any age 
or country, save in the South, there have 
been collision and violence — inexpressible 
and irreconcilable. Thomas Jefferson, 
who predicted sixty years ago that the 
slaves would be freed, also predicted that 



The New South, 



the two races could live together in 
peace. Mr. Everett held that coloniza- 
tion alone could save the freedman. Mr. 
Clay and . Mr. Webster were of like opin- 
ion. They did not dream, perhaps, when 
considering the difficulties of peaceful 
and gradual emancipation, of the added 
difficulties that would come from the 
sudden striking off of the shackles with a 
bloody sword, and the instant enfranchise- 
ment of the whole race of freedmen. 
They simply declared, in the light of past 
history, that no two races could be car- 
ried on the same soil, in peace, if they 
had equal political rights. 



234 ^^^ New South. 



CONDITIONS OF HARMONY BETWEEN TWO 
RACES. 

If a statesman were asked what condi- 
tions he would require to reverse the 
universal verdict of the history of 
races, and to carry two races on the same 
soil in peace, he would probably say : 

1. That the races shall be as nearly 
alike as possible ; so that the race antipa- 
thies would not be strong, nor the race 
differences marked. 

2. That the two races should be as 
nearly equal in intelligence and property 
as possible, so that neither could easily 
oppress or tyrannize over the other. 

3. That each race should earnestly de- 



The New Soicth. 235 



sire a fusion of blood in which all differ- 
ences would be lost. 

4. That there should be no long-stand- 
ing cause of suspicion or hostility be- 
tween the races, so that frankness and 
sincerity might have their full weight. 

5. That the experiment should be vol- 
untary on both sides, so that both races 
shall come to it cheerfully and without 
sullenness or restraint. 

6. That there should be no outside 
interference to irritate and excite, but 
that the problem should be left with the 
two races at interest. 

Those are the conditions that any wise 
man would consider prerequisite to a 
settlement of the racial problem. They 
make the basis for a very interesting 



2^6 The New South. 



book, '' An Appeal to Pharaoh," published 
anonymously. Now let us see the actual 
conditions under which the white and 
black people of the South are set to solve 
their problem. 

1. The races are not only not " as near 
alike as possible," but they are the two 
most dissimilar types of the human race. 
At every point the racial difference is 
positive and striking-. The two colors — 
white and black — are hardly more 
extreme than the differences that follow. 

2. The races are not only not " nearly 
equal in intelligence or property," but 
more unequal than any two races that are 
in juxtaposition to-day. Nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the property in the South, and 
almost the same percentage of intelli- 



The New South. 237 

gence, is with the white race, leaving the 
other race ignorant and irresponsible. 

3. Not only do the two races not 
*' earnestly desire fusion," but both races 
are pledged against it as the one impossi- 
ble thing. 

4. Not only is there not " no long- 
standing professed cause of hostility," but 
there is the deepest cause of hostility 
that can exist — in that one race has been 
in servitude to the other for a century. 

5. Not only is the experiment not " a 
voluntary one on both sides," but it was 
forced on the two races after a long and 
fierce war, in Avhich one race was stunned 
and crippled, and the other thrown into 
dazzling freedom. 

6. Not only is there not *' no interfer- 



238 The New South. 

ence from outside sources," but the 
most irritating and partisan interference 
is exercised all the time. The North 
persistently misjudges and misunder- 
stands the race problem in the South, 
and interferes unwisely and unjustly. 

In spite of these difficulties — which 
must appear insuperable to impartial 
minds — the South hopes and believes she 
can solve this problem. Her best and 
wisest men give it their best and wisest 
thought. Certain lines of action have 
been laid down and are unchangeable. 
Among these are two principles that are 
essential. 



The New South. 239 



SOUTHERN BELIEFS REGARDING RACE 
TROUBLES. 

First — That the whites shall have 
clear and unmistakable control of public 
affairs. They own the property. They 
have the intelligence. Theirs is the re- 
ponsibility. For these reasons they are 
entitled to control. Beyond these 
reasons is a racial one. They are the 
superior race, and will not and cannot sub- 
mit to the domination of an inferior race. 
Never has a white race been long 
subordinated to a colored race. Less 
than any white race, will the English- 
speaking people submit to the domination 
of a colored race. Less than any colored 
race, can the African race, forever in 



240 The New Son til. 

servitude, Avin or maintain such su- 
premacy. 

It may be asked, then : '' Why do the 
Southern whites fear the political dom? 
ination of the blacks ?" They do not fear 
that directly. But the blacks are ignor- 
ant, and therefore easily deluded ; im- 
pulsive, and therefore easily led ; strong 
of race instinct, and therefore clannish ; 
without information, and therefore with- 
out strong political convictions ; passion- 
ate, and therefore easily excited; poor, 
irresponsible, and with no idea of the in- 
tegrity of the suffrage, and therefore 
easily bought. The fear is that this vast 
swarm of ignorant, purchasable, and 
credulous voters will be compacted and 
controlled by desperate and unscrupulous 



The New Soitfh. 241 

white men, and made to hold the balance 
of power wherever the whites are 
divided. This fear has kept, and will 
keep, the whites '' solid." It would keep 
the intelligence and responsibility of any 
community. North or South, solid. 

The Southern whites remember the 
shameless villainies of negro supremacy, 
under carpet-bag leaderships. The world 
will never hear, or hearing, believe, the 
excesses of those days. Deep as was the 
degradation to which these sovereign 
States were carried, and heavy as is the 
burden they left on this impoverished 
people, it was only when the white race, 
rallying from the graves of its dead and 
the ashes of its homes, closed its deci- 
mated ranks, and fronting federal bav- 



242 The Nczv South. 

onets, and defying federal power, stood 
like a stone wall before the uttermost 
temples of its liberty and credit, and the 
hideous drama closed — that the miserable 
assault was checked. 

The whites understand that the slight- 
est division on their part will revive those 
desperate days. In Virginia there was 
disagreement on the debt question, and 
Mahone, taking the demagogue side of 
that issue, rallied the negroes and cap- 
tured the State. In North Carolina a 
division on prohibition promised to lead 
to the same result. So that the whites 
have agreed everywhere to sink their 
differences on moral and economic issues, 
and present solid and unbroken ranks to 
this alien and dangerous element. This 



The New South. 243 

once done, the rest is easy. Banded in- 
telligence and responsibility will win 
everywhere and all the time. Against it 
numbers cannot prevail. 

We hear much of the intimidation of 
the colored vote in the South. There is 
intimidation, but it is the menace of the 
compact and solid wealth and intelligence 
of a great social system. Against this 
menace, peaceful and majestic, counter- 
organization cannot stand. That is why 
the negro fails to vote in the South. He 
will not vote except under persistent and 
systematic and inspiring organization, 
This organization cannot be effected or 
maintained against a powerful and united 
social system that embraces the wealth 
and intelligence of the community. 



244 ^The New South. 

Without organization, no party can be 
carried at the polls — less than all, the 
Republican party of the South, made up 
almost entirely of negroes. Did the 
hope of spoils inspire, then they might 
organize, but they themselves have 
learned that Republican victory brings 
them nothing but the sorriest of crumbs. 
The negro as a political force has 
dropped out of serious consideration, and 
will there remain until he is so uplifted 
and educated and led into steadfast 
ways, that the whites will dare to open 
or divide the phalanx that now holds un- 
challenged control of political affairs in 
the South. 

Second — That the whites and blacks 
must walk in separate paths in the South. 



The New South. 



245 



As near as may be, these paths should be 
made equal — but separate they must be 
now and always. This means separate 
schools, separate churches, separate ac- 
commodation everywhere — but equal ac- 
commodation where the same money is 
charged, or where the State provides for 
the citizen. Georgia gives her State 
University $8,000 a year ; precisely the 
same sum to her colored university. 
When the colored university insisted on 
educating whites and blacks together, the 
Legislature withheld its appropriation, 
but the money was held in the treasury 
for two years, sacred to the uses of a col- 
ored university, and has just been voted 
in bulk to Morris-Brown College, which 



246 The New South, 

agreed to admit no white students, but to 
stand on separate education. 

The negroes of Georgia pay but one- 
fortieth of the taxes, and yet they take 
forty-nine per cent, of the school fund. 
Railroads in Georgia provide separate 
but equal cars for whites and blacks, and 
a white man is not permitted to occupy a 
colored car. This separation is not offen- 
sive to either race, but is accepted by 
both races as the best conducive to the 
common peace and prosperity. There 
are fanatics and doctrinaires who hold 
that separation is discrimination, and that 
discrimination is offensive. Conclusive 
reply to this objection is found in the his- 
tory of the churches in the South. 



The New South. 247 



THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

known in the South as the Northern 
Methodist church, sent its missionaries to 
the South to establish churches. White 
and black preachers met in the same con- 
ference, and white and black parishioners 
worshiped in the same churches. Here 
everything- favored union. The North- 
ern Methodists were in full sympathy 
with the negroes, and most of them were 
abolitionists. The negroes trusted and 
loved the Northern Methodists, for it was 
the North that had given them freedom, 
and it was the Methodists that gave them 
churches. But the union did not last ; 
the congregation separated, and finally 
the white and black preachers, finding 



248 The New South, 

that they could not remain in the same 
conference, established for each State a 
white and colored conference for their 
church. Back of this, the great body of 
negro Methodists joined the African 
Methodist church, into which no white 
man is admitted, the preachers, elders, 
and bishops being black. This is very 
much the strongest church among the 
negroes in the South. The negro Bap- 
tists are also separately organized. Fra- 
ternal delegates are sent to the colored 
and white conferences of all the churches, 
and the utmost harmony prevails. But 
there is no desire on either side for union. 
In temporal as in spiritual affairs the in- 
terests of both races are best served by 
separate but equal paths. The attempt 



The New South. 249 

to force commingling of the races, where 
the habits and instincts of both races ob- 
ject, would produce irritation and lead to 
hopeless conflict. 

It must not be imagined that the 
negro is outlawed in the South. He has 
ten avenues of employment in this sec- 
tion to where he has one in the North. 
White and black carpenters and masons 
work together on the same buildings. 
White and black shoemakers and 
mechanics in the same shops. White 
and black hackmen drive on the same 
streets. White and black farmers work 
in the same field. Whatever the negro 
is fitted to do, he has abundant chance to 
do. All this, too, in the South, where 
the negro is in such numbers that he 



250 The New South. 

seriously competes for work and lowers 
wages. All this is done, too, without 
protest or without friction. But the 
white and black carpenters, working 
together on the same building, go to sepa- 
rate homes at night, to separate churches 
on Sunday. White and black mechanics 
in the same shop send their children to 
separate schools. White and black 
farmers in the same field ride to market 
in separate cars. This distinction may 
seem trifling, but it is natural. It re- 
sponds to an instinct planted by the 
Almighty in the two races. It is the 
wisest and the best course. 

On these two lines of action, political 
and social, the South has moved rapidly 
towards the solution of the race problem. 



The N'e^v South. 251 



If left alone, it can solve it. Interference 
simply irritates, and outside opinion 
simply misjudges. The negroes are pros- 
pering and are contented. Malignant 
agitators who seek office from the gov- 
ernment, or notoriety, or bribes, inveigh 
against the status, and magnify the 
occasional disorders. Happily the re- 
cords show that the negro is prospering. 
In Georgia he has amassed property 
taxed at $10,000,000 and worth twice as 
much. In every Southern State he owns 
farms and city property. His children 
have good schools. He has his churches, 
his societies, and his sports. And he is 
prospering faster than the same number 
of people, just released from a century of 
slavery, without property or education, 



252 The New South. 

could prosper in any community on this 
earth. If the negroes of Alabama had 
been carried to Iowa twenty years ago, 
displacing an equal number of white 
men, misled and wrongly advised as they 
have been at home, and passing through 
the same periods of political irritation, 
they would not have had to-day one-half 
the property or prosperity they now 
have in Alabama. The American Re- 
public has achieved great things, but it 
will have nothing better to render into 
the keeping of universal history than the 
progress made by the two races in the 
South in the past twenty-five years 
towards the adjustment of their relations 
and the solution of the problem that is 
theirs. 



The Nezv South. 253 



CHAPTER VT. 

Some one, wittier than kind, has said : 
" The old men of the South, sitting amid 
their ruins and looking for better days, 
remind me of the Spanish hidalgos sitting 
on the porches of the Alhambra and 
looking for the return of the Spanish 
Armada." 

There is pathos, but little fun, in that, 
to me. These old men, for the most 
part, lived stainless lives. The curse of 
fallen humanity, slavery, under their 
wisdom and kindness, largely lost its 
horrors and lived by the excellence of 
its administration when it had been con- 



254 The New So7ith. 

demned by the Avorld. About it they 
built a civilization that in tender and 
engaging- grace has not, perhaps, been 
equaled. The scenes amid which they 
moved, as princes among men, have van- 
ished forever. A grosser and more 
material day has come in which their 
gentle hands could garner but scantily, 
and their simple hearts beat but feebly. 
And so, without a murmur, they pass 
quietly from the stage — never to give 
place to princelier and better gentlemen. 
As they sit in the porches of their dis- 
mantled homes, into which dishonor 
never entered, and to which discourtesy 
is a stranger, and gaze out to the horizon 
beyond which their Armada has drifted 
forever — though the sea shall not yield 



The New SoictJi. 255 

them from the argosies that went down 
with their ships — yet their sons, rendered 
back in God's mercy, shall find them 
richer and broader prosperity than that 
they have lost. 

Years ago I was a chum of one of these 
old gentlemen. That is, I would sit at 
his side and listen for hours to his quaint 
and courtly talk. I can see him now as I 
write — his kingly figure, his ruddy face, 
his white hair, his lisle thread gloves, his 
closely buttoned coat — hiding poverty 
and pain. And with his memory comes 
the picture of old Colonel Newcome, as 
he used to stand in his black gown, with 
the order of the Bath on his breast, and 
answer *' Adsum " with the pensioners in 
Gre) friar's hospital. For my old friend, 



256 The New South. 

too, leaned in his old age on a charity he 
might have bought a thousand times over 
in his youth. One day he said to me : 
'' Do you know, it appears to me that 
turkeys have lost their flavor?" I 
avowed that, to me, the great bird was 
still toothsome. *' On my island," — for 
he was one of those sea-island kings — 
" they fed largely on mast, which gave a 
nutty richness to their meat. I had 
thousands every year — the finest birds 
imaginable." I suggested that from these 
great droves of turkeys he must have had 
quite an income. " Income !" he replied, 
" why, my young friend, no Southern 
gentleman ever sold poultry !" 

I happen to know the old man's son — a 
strong, upright, manly fellow. He came 



TJie New South. 257 

home from the war a bullet or two 
heavier than when he left college, and 
throwing off his gray jacket — hung up, 
however, for his children to revere — he 
went to work. Sell poultry ? Well, 1 
should say so ! He sells the eggs, then 
he sells the meat, then he sells the feathers, 
then he has the soil of his poultry-house 
scraped up and sold. From these once 
despised resources — sold with huckster- 
like exactness, though in larger spirit — he 
has rebuilt the fortunes of his family, and 
restored his father to independence. I 
see them often — the old man, trembling 
and aged, but happy in the heart and 
home of his son — the young man, con- 
firmed in his new life, and holding it to 
be, though more strenuous, vet broader 



258 The New Soutk 

and better than the old life ever could 
have been. And as they walk out to- 
gether — and they often do — each honor- 
ing- and respecting the other, though 
their lives are wide apart, I notice that 
the old man's hand seeks lovingly the 
young man's shoulder, and rests there, 
ennobling it with the knighthood of the 
fifth commandment, as it lays there the 
unspeakable blessing of an honored and 
grateful father ! 

Along the line of the gulf coast, near 
where ex-President Davis lately lay dy- 
ing, and on the South Atlantic coast, from 
Darien to Charleston, there is where our 
Ilium fuit is yet written. There the bat 
yet flits through deserted mansions where 
once beauty and chivalr}^ gathered amid 



The New South. 259 

scenes of splendor. Immense rose-gar- 
dens burst upon the traveler in the midst 
of a deserted wilderness. Through mag- 
nolia groves gleam the white pillars of 
palaces, empty and desolate. Avenues of 
orange trees lead the curious to heaps of 
ruins that tell of the torch, dead thirty 
years ago. On parterres where once pea- 
cocks swept in royal beauty, ill-omened 
birds now lope and hover. Rabbits gam- 
bol by the light of the moon in superb 
gardens where once in splendid fetes the 
moon itself was shamed. Swarms of 
negroes, seeking the coast by instinct, 
hold almost undisputed possession. Al- 
ways the country homes of the rich — 
points of luxury and pleasure — the busy 



26o The New Sotcth, 

South has not yet found time to reclaim 
and rehabilitate these homes. 

Royal homes were these old " sea is- 
lands " — principalities in area, dukedoms 
in revenue. The main product was the 
long staple cotton, which commanded 
three times the price of ordinary cotton, 
and of which they had a monopoly. 
Often a thousand slaves were owned by 
one islander, and on the mainland, tended 
his rice plantations. Every species of 
game thronged the forest of the island, 
and the tropical fruits flourished. All 
that art and wealth could do to make 
these islands enchanting was done. 
Guests from both sides of the ocean 
found there hospitality that the best 
homes of England could not surpass. 



The New Soitth, 261 

Pleasure vessels opened the sea to the 
planter and his friends, and his own ships 
carried his cargoes to and fro. On the 
mainland was clustered the oldest and 
best society of the States. In Liberty 
county (Georgia) is the home of Lyman 
Hall, one of the signers of the Declara- 
tion. It is now occupied by an illiterate 
negro. A mile away is the old Medway 
church-yard, in which lie buried four of 
Georgia's governors. Near that church, 
that cradle of liberty in Georgia, a few 
months ago, a man claiming to be Christ 
harangued thousands of negroes. They 
deserted home, fields, everything, and 
lived with their new Messiah. The most 
horrible rites and orgies ensued. Ne- 
groes of both sexes, perfectly naked, 



262 The New South, 

galloped on all fours around the false 
Christ, grunting like hogs, until they fell 
exhausted. When he was arrested they 
ran naked in troops for miles, following 
the sheriff's buggy. They then set up a 
black Queen of Sheba, and worshiped 
her. Despoiled of their queen, they ral- 
lied about a dusky exhorter, who claimed 
to be King Solomon — the obstinacy of 
their superstition literally paralyzing the 
industry of the county. This, too, a 
county that for half a century was the 
ruling center of wealth and intellect in 
Georgia. 

The exceeding beauty and richness of 
the islands along the Georgia coasts 
have attracted Northern millionaires. 
Mr. Carnegie bought " Dungeness," the 



The New Soicth. 263 

old home of General Nathaniel Greene. 
It was here that Eli Whitney, a tutor in 
General Greene's family, invented the 
cotton gin. At the first test of the gin 
the cotton packed on the roller. Mrs. 
Nightingale, General Greene's daughter, 
observing Whitney's annoyance when the 
cotton clogged the machine, took her 
tortoise-shell comb from her hair, and 
holding it firmly against the roller, solved 
the problem. It is at " Dungeness " that 
Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of 
General Robert E. Lee, is buried. '' Dun- 
geness " was famous for its rose-gardens, 
covering acres and acres, and for the 
beauty of its old mansion. Mr. Carnegie 
restored the gardens, avenues and man- 
sion, and no prince has a finer estate. 



264 The Nciv South. 

Jekyll's Island, near by, has been bought 
by a club of Northern men, who have 
already spent over half a million dollars, 
and have but begun. Jekyll's is thick 
with game. All manner of ducks fill its 
bogs and ponds. Quails make its thick- 
ets musical. There are over two hun- 
dred deer in one drove. Wild turkeys, 
squirrels and opossums abound. English 
pheasants were introduced and have mul- 
tiplied amazingly. The owners are de- 
lighted with Jekyll's, and intend to make 
it the rival of Tuxedo. 

The beauty of Southern scenery, and 
the tenderness of Southern skies, have 
caught the attention of many of the very 
rich men of the North. Mr. H. M. Flag- 
ler, of the Standard Oil Company, has 



TJlc Nezv South. 26 



spent over $7,000,000 in hotels and im- 
provements, and his Ponce de Leon and 
Alcazar are not equaled in the old world 
or the new. Mr. George Vanderbilt pur- 
chased a mountain near Ashville, in the 
famous '' land of the sky," and has out- 
lined improvements that will cost over 
$3,000,000. In Florida a number of mill- 
ionaires — including- a foreign prince and 
duke or so — have made superb winter 
homes. By the way, Florida has recov- 
ered what she lost to California two years 
ago. The tide of travel is turning again, 
and Florida is not only confirmed as the 
winter garden of the Republic, but its san- 
itarium. The air and the sunshine of the 
South make life delightful, which recalls 
a little story. A Northern lady and a 



266 The New South, 

Southern one were thrown together for a 
day or two. The Northern lady had 
criticised the railroads, the hotels, the 
homes, the towns, the farms of the South. 
At last she said : 

'' I tell you, though, I do enjoy your 
balmy air, and your genial sunshine." 

" I am so ,glad," replied her Southern 
neighbor, '' for that's about all the Yan- 
kees left us." 



In i860, Georgia, Alabama, and South 
Carolina were, with the exception of 
Rhode Island, the three richest States in 
the Union. In 1880, they were, with the 
exception of Idaho, the three poorest. 
In the above comparison wealth is meas- 



The New SoiUh. 267 

ured by the holdings per capita of the 
citizens of each State. After twenty -five 
years of peace and of unusual prosperity, 
Georgia has just reached again the total 
of her tax books in i860, minus her prop- 
erty in slaves. 

What a pull it has been ! Through the 
ashes and desolation of war — up the hill, 
a step at a time, nothing certain — not 
even the way ! Hindered, misled, and 
yet always moving up a little, until — 
shall we say it?— the top has been 
reached, and the rest is easy ! The des- 
perate days of starvation — the doubtful 
days of experiment — these are over. 
And now the world will witness a change 
in the South, little less than magical. 
The ground has been prepared — the seed 



268 The New SotUJi, 

put in — the tiny shoots tended past the 
danger-point — and the day of the mighty' 
harvest is here ! 

The Comstock lode is, perhaps, the 
richest spot of the earth. And yet, all 
about it is bleakness and miser}^ Its 
teeming riches have gone to build up dis- 
tant cities and carry great currents, of 
which the miners, gasping in its depths, 
hear but dim report. The cotton field is 
a new Comstock lode. And for years the 
farmers fought in destitution, as the 
miners fight, while the bales of cotton, as 
of silver, went to enrich the cities beyond 
their horizon. At last they have learned 
how to catch the ebbing sea at the edge 
of the patch, and throw its enriching 
flood back on their own fields. 



The New South. 269 

The long-leafed pine, now standing in 
Southern forests, would yield, at $10 a 
thousand feet — the crudest form in which 
it can be rendered — $500,000,000 in excess 
of the total taxable value of the South, 
including cities, railroads, farms, personal 
property, everything. That is an enor 
mous possession ! But that does not 
satisfy the New South. Made into fur- 
niture, that pine would bring $50 instead 
of $10 a thousand feet. And so, in some- 
thing over four hundred and fifty factor- 
ies, she is turning it into furniture. 

Nobody imagines that the somewhat 
comical revolution in Brazil — in which 
the people said to the emperor : '* If you 
please, sir," and the emperor, good soul, 
said to the people : '' With pleasure," — 



270 The New Soitth. 

was the off-hand affair it looks to be. 
Under the surface for years and years the 
republican forces have been at work, 
advancing, retreating, trying, failing, 
patiently learning, testing, strengthening, 
until at last everything was ready, and it 
was just — '' Presto ! change !" 

For twenty-five years the industrial 
forces of the South have been at work 
under the surface. Making little show, 
experimenting, working out new waj's, 
blocking up old wa3's, peering about 
with the lamp of experience barely lit, 
digging, delving, struggling, until at last 
the day has come, and independence is 
proclaimed. Now watch the change take 
place with almost comical swiftness ! 

I cannot, of course, attempt to answer, 



The Nczu Soiith. 271 



here or elsewhere, the inquiries these 
articles have brought and will bring. 
However, there is one, from a lady in 
Maine, that may very well be answered. 
She asks : " Do you people of the South 
acknowledge that the cause your fathers 
fought for was wicked and wrong?" 

We do not. We would not be worthy 
of those fathers if we did. Nor of 
national fellowship. We accept as final 
the arbitrament of the sword, to which 
our fathers appealed. In perfect loyalty 
and sincerity we have taken up the new 
work that comes to our hands, hoping 
for nothing better than to do that work 
well. This is as far as generous men 
should ask us to go. It is as far as brave 
and self-respecting men can go. 



272 The New South, 

Lately a number of Georgians went to 
Ohio. At a public reception one of the 
Georgians stated he had fought at Get- 
tysburg. Shortly afterwards an elderly 
lady in black asked for the Georgian who 
had fought at Gettysburg. He was 
pointed out. She said to him : 

" Did you fight with the rebels at Get- 
tysburg ?" 

** I had that honor, madam !** 

" My husband was killed in that battle.*' 

** It brought sorrows to many noble 
and innocent hearts, madam !" 

** I wanted to tell you, sir, that, at last 
I — " The voice faltered ; the eyes filled ; 
the head was bowed — and, in silence, the 
widow caught the hand of the Georgian, 



The New South. 



27, 



and held it in loving and forgiving 
grasp ! 

Why cannot the lady from Maine rest 
her case — why cannot we all rest ours — 
where the lady from Ohio rested hers ? 




WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER 15th: 

FIVE YEARS 



WITH THE 



CONGO CANNIBALS. 

By HERBERT WARD. 

Magmificently lUustrated With Many Full-Pagre Engrav- 
ings After Orig-inal Dra-wing-s Made on the Spot By 
the Author. Crown Octavo, Eleg-antly Bound, $3.00. 



Herbert Ward's book is the record of five years spent 
with the most savage tribes of the far interior of Africa. 
It contains many facts, hitherto unknown, concerning the 
life, customs and superstitions of the cannibal races. It 
abounds with thrilling adventures, and the story it tells of 
risks and dangers encountered in strange places, and 
among wild and hostile people, is one of fascinating in- 
terest. A flood of light is thrown on the horrors and 
cruelties existing among the millions of Central Africa. 

Mr Ward's travels in Africa commenced in 1884, when 
he received an appointment in the service of the Congo 
Free State. He was a member of the Emin Bey Relief 
Expedition, and while in the service of Mr. H. M. Stanley, 
he made his memorable canoe journey of eleven hundred 
miles on the Congo. 

^ His book contains entirely new matter about the tribes 
of Central Africa, will have permanent interest and value, 
and will be the standard work on that subject. 



AN INTERESTING VOLUME ON THE GREAT AFRICAN 
TRAVELLER, 

HENRY M. STANLEY. 

His Life and his Explorations, witli a full account of his Latest 
Achievement, 

THE RESCUE OF EMIN BEY. 

By Henry Frederic Redd all. 12mo. 416 Pages. 

Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Boxmd Volume, $1.00. 




Mr. Reddall lias prepared a timely accotmtof one of tlie greatest 
explorers known to history. His book contains a record of Stan- 
ley's adventurous career from the time he started out as a cabin- 
hoy from his home i-i Wales to his return with the rescued Emin 
Bey. It meets the demand for a more comprehensive account of 
this remarkable man than previously existed, and satisfies the 
eager desire of all who have read of his last great exploit for 
authentic information concerning his whole adventurous career 
and heroic achievements. 



Edda's Birthright 



By MRS. HARRIET LEWIS. 



With Seven Illustrations. 



Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Boiind Volume, $1.00. 



"Edda's Birthright" is an excellent novel. Mrs. 
Lewis has the faculty of making a story thoroughly inter- 
esting. There is, in ''Edda's Birthright," a charming 
girl, who engages sympathy by her spirited behavior in 
depressing circumstances, and wins the heart of the 
reader by her truly womanly character. The scene of 
the story is the great city of London, and the heroine has 
many strange incidents and episodes in her life. It is 
her splendid courage which makes her great charm, and 
which finally wins. Every one who reads this book will 
be well repaid. 

ROBERT BONNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
Cor. William and Spruce Streets, New York. 



WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER ist: 

"The Fall of the Christians" in Book 
Form, Under the Title of 

PAOLI, 
The Last of the Missionaries. 

A Picture of the Overthrow of the Chris- 
tians in Japan in the Seven- 
teenth Century. 



By W. C. KITGHIN. 

Superbly Illustrated With Larg-e and Small Engraving's 
From Desigms By Gr. A. Traver and Henry Bouche. 
12mo. 500 Pag-es. Handsomely Bound in Cloth. 
Price, $1.00. 

This is a stirring romance in an entirely new field. 
There are a freshness and novelty about it which are vastly 
attractive. Japan is not altogether an unknown land, 
but few are aware of the treasures of romance and adven- 
ture in its history. It was the scene of the missionary 
labors of the great Catholic, Francis Xavier. The over- 
throw, in the seventeenth century, of the Christian con- 
verts of the Catholic missionary who had achieved a 
powerful position, is the greatest event in Japanese 
annals. The story introduces all the great historical 
personages of this epoch, and combines the fascination 
of a novel with the interest of historical truth. 



WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER ist: 

A Matter of Millions. 

By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN, 

Author of " The Forsaken Inn," " The Leavenworth Case," etc. 

Magnificently Illustrated By Victor Perard. 



12mo. 482 Pagres. Handsomely Bound in Eng-lish Cloth., 
Gold Stamping- on Cover. Price, $1.50. 



This brilliant, artistic novel will enhance the great 
reputation of the popular author of " The Forsaken 
Inn." It is a story of to-day. The scene is laid in the 
city of New York and the village of Great Barrington, 
Mass. The story recites the strange adventures of a 
beautiful heiress who is herself so mysterious a creature 
that the reader cannot fathom her character until the 
final explanation and denouement of the plot. She is an 
intellectual and talented girl whose musical gifts make 
her admired and beloved by her own sex, and the object 
of passionate adoration by the other sex. The artistic 
life is pictured and exemplified by two of the principal 
characters in the story. Everything conspires to make 
the story one of strong dramatic interest. 



WILL BE ISSUED OCTOBER ist: 

A CHEAP EDITION 

In Handsome Paper Cover. Price, 50 Cents. 



THE FORSAKEN INN 

By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN. 

ILLUSTRATED BY VICTOR FERARD. 



Anna Katharine Green's novel, '' The Forsaken Inn," 
is admitted to be her best work. The authoress of '' The 
Leavenworth Case " has always been considered extraor- 
dinarily clever in the construction of mystifying and excit- 
ing plots, but in this book she has not only eclipsed 
even herself in her specialty, but has combined with her 
story-telling gift a fascinating mixture of poetical quali- 
ties which makes ''The Forsaken Inn" a work of such 
interest that it will not be laid dov/n by an imaginative 
reader until he has reached the last line of the last chap- 
ter. The scene of the story is the Hudson, between 
Albany and Poughkeepsie, and the time is the close of 
the eighteenth century. In writing her previous books, 
the authoress carefully planned her work before putting 
pen to paper, but this story was written in a white heat, 
and under the spur of a moment of inspiration. 

"The Forsaken Inn " would have a large circulation 
even if the author was less well known and popular than 
Anna Katharine Green. With the author's reputation 
and its own inherent excellence, we confidently predict 
that it will prove the novel of the season. 

The illustrations of " The Forsaken Inn " are by Victor 
Perard. They are twenty-one in number, and are a beau- 
tiful embellishment of the book. 



The Baroness Blank. 



A NOVEL OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE. 



By AUGUST NIEMANN. 



Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Boirnd Voltune, $1.00. 



This is the production of a great and admirable writer. 
It belongs to the highest class of modern fiction, in which 
the principal characters of our epoch are reproduced with 
their atmosphere and environment. No one can take up 
this book and fail to be struck with the masterly presenta- 
tion of character and motive, and the excellence of the 
dialogue. The scenes are placed in the highest circles 
of the German capital, showing the vast wealth and in- 
fluence of the great Hebrew families and their connec- 
tions. The plot embraces many situations and charac- 
ters, and is somewhat diffuse, but there is an abundance 
of incident and thrilling and passionate feeling. 



Ottilie Aster's Silence. 



A NOVEL. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 



By MRS. D. M. LOWREY, 



With Numerous Choice Illustrations By Warren B. Davis. 



Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Bound Volume, $1.00. 



No more charming story of the love-life of a married 
couple was ever portrayed in the pages of a novel. Ro- 
mance docs not end with marriage, and it does not 
require any demonstration to prove it ; but if it did, this 
novel shows how great are the elements of romantic inter- 
est which exist in the marriage relation. There is in it 
the beauty of family life in a pure household, and the 
mother and daughter exhibit all the beautiful traits which 
endear women to men and make the charm of the world. 



CESAR BIROTTEAU 

FROM THE FRENCH OF 

HONORE DE BALZAC. 

WITH FOURTEEN CHOICE ILLUSTRATIONS 

By HARRY G. EDWARDS. 

Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Bound Volxtme, $1.00. 




1' 



Vi. 



The novels of Honore de Balzac are among the greatest 
works of the kind that any country has produced. That 
they go deeper into the human heart, represent more 
truly human passions, and reflect with greater accuracy 
the multiform phases of human life than the works of any 
other novelist is claimed for him by some of the foremost 
critics of the world. ''Cesar Birotteau " is one of his 
most beautiful and characteristic novels. 



A NEW EDITION. 



THE HIDDEN HAND. 

By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTH^^STORTH, 

Author of " Unknoivn," "For Woman's Love,'" *' A Leap in 

the Dark," ** Nearest and Dearest," "* The Lost Lady 

of Lone," ''The Unloved Wife," etc. 

With Illustrations By W. H. Thwaites and Arthur Lumley. 
Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Bound Voliune, $1.00. 



" The Hidden Hand ; or, Capitola the Madcap," is one 
of the most popular stories ever issued from the press. We 
doubt if, in all the realms of literature, there has ever 
been a heroine who could vie with the captivating mad- 
cap Capitola in exciting the admiration of readers, or in 
winning and keeping their hearts. She is so bright, so 
spirited, so beautiful, so sagacious, so dauntless, and yet 
so innocent and childlike, that she at once takes all 
readers captive and holds them enchained by her fascina- 
tions clear to the last page of the story. 

The way in which Capitola outwits, overcomes and cap- 
tures the gigantic and brutal robber Black Donald, when 
he had concealed himself in her lonely room at the dead 
of night, and chuckled with fiendish glee to think he had 
the bewitching girl in his power, is one of the most thrill- 
ing chapters in the entire range of romantic literature. 

'*The most valuable and popular story ever published 
in the New York Ledger was Mrs. Southworth's ' Hidden 
Hand.' So great was the demand for it that it was re- 
published in the Ledge? three times ! The cry came 
from everywhere : ' Publish this great story in book form P 
And now it is published in book form, and is eagerly read 
by tens of thousands of admirers." — Passaic City Herald, 



, ^ 



